


Losing Time

by stormy1x2



Category: Primeval, The Losers (2010)
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormy1x2/pseuds/stormy1x2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny, Abby and Connor are still lost in time. The ARC's having a hard time finding them. However, Connor has a relative who's been keeping track of him. Post S3 Primeval ignores S4 , Post Losers 2010 , ignores comic canon. Light slash Jensen/Cougar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lost in Time

Title: Losing Time  
Author: Stormy1x2 (traveling_storm)  
Fandom: Primevil/Losers (2010 movie)  
Word Count (this chapter): 7301  
Set: at the end of S3 for Primevil and post-Losers movie. Ignores current S4 PEVL and comic book Losers.  
Notes: An extra-special thank you to nickdevilance who combed through this, offered suggestions and basically put up with me asking tons of questions.   


  
_____________________________________________________________________  
“How much of human life is lost in waiting.” Ralph Waldo Emerson  
_____________________________________________________________________  


The scene was so tranquil, so idyllic, it could have come straight off the back of a postcard, advertising the perfect get-away spot. Beautiful green meadows swooped off in the distance, rolling over gentle hills topped with white-flecked granite stones, looking almost artfully arranged to provide the perfect resting stop. The air was crisp, clean, the sky a vivid blue.

In the distance, puffy white clouds gave way to light grey, courtesy of the puffing volcano in the distance; close enough to appreciate, yet far enough away to reassure viewers of any kind of immediate danger. Overhead, what looked like flocks of birds – though large birds, to be sure – wheeled about in the sky, keeping to a formation only they could understand.

Indeed, it was picturesque. It was serene. It was paradise.

Danny Quin absolutely hated it. And if it were truly as perfect as it seemed, he grumbled silently to himself, there would picnickers and hikers trolling the hills, instead of hordes of humanities ape-like ancestors, picking and flicking and grooming each other. Soft grunts – the precursor of proper speech, he surmised – kept the various groups In contact with each other. The ‘birds’ above were obviously some kind of early evolution – Danny wasn’t an expert like the other members of the ARC team, but he knew those weren’t seagulls up there.

By his count, he’d been trapped in the past – the Plio-something, he recalled Connor mentioning – roughly thirty-six days. His clothes were still hanging on by virtue of him not running into any major predators (yet), though he’d shed his over-shirt to compensate for the mild weather. He’d found a...well, cave was one word to call it, to hole up in. It more resembled a burrow for a mole or badger and he really did not want to know what the prehistoric versions of those were. The overgrowing weeds and musty, dry smell, plus the lack of tracks anywhere nearby convinced him it was empty, and so he’d found some large rocks to push over that he used to form a door at night, and when he was out.

His hair and beard were driving him mad. He’d made an attempt at cutting his hair with his pocket knife in the beginning, but it was hard to see and painful to do. The most grooming he did now was trying to keep his beard from growing longer than Santa Claus’. He scratched at it irritably as he surveyed the landscape from his perch on one of the hills.

A grunt came from behind him; he turned to see one of the ape-men, as he’d come to call them, wandering past. They didn’t bother him, though some of them did come up to sniff at him curiously in the beginning. He held up a hand. “Mornin’, mate. Lovely day, isn’t it?” Another grunt and the ape-man kept up his amble down the hill. “That’s what I thought too. Good to talk with ya.”

He was going to lose his mind, eventually. He was sure of it. If anyone did manage to find him one day, they’d have a hard time picking him out of the scads of hairy ape-men littering the Plio-whatsit.  


  
_________________  


  
Several hundred million years even further behind Danny, Abby Maitland and Connor Temple were in a similar situation, though they obviously couldn’t be sure of it.

Connor still wondered what happened to Danny – where he was, if he was okay – but he and Abby had stopped talking about that long ago. They had enough to worry about dealing with their own dilemma of being trapped in a far more hostile land than Danny was, and besides, there wasn’t anything that they could to do help him. Constantly talking about any sort of might-haves was only depressing and worrying.

He and Abby, on the other hand, were doing about as well as could be expected. Connor was thankful that his injuries from the sonic grenade and his subsequent tumble from a tree had resulted in rather mild injuries. His arm had been badly sprained but not broken as they had initially thought, and his concussion had healed rather well. There’d been no chance of him lapsing into a coma, not with Abby jabbing him in the ribs every hour.

They’d done their best to turn their tree-top refuge into more of an actual tree-house after it became apparent rescue wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Belts, shoelaces and a spare t-shirt from the duffel bag Becker had tossed to Connor before their fateful trip and torn into strips, served as rope to lash branches together to form some kind of canopy over their heads. Thankfully the weather wasn’t very cold, even at night. Curling up like puppies against the main trunk created enough body heat to ensure they’d have just enough warmth to be comfortable.

Connor had taken to carving notches in the bark of an ancient pine to try and keep track of the days. It wasn’t completely accurate – there were a few days missing from the beginning of their adventure when Abby had been more focused on keeping Connor and herself alive, and then there had been that freaky encounter with a T-Rex on the plains near the forest they’d taken refuge in. It had been Abby’s turn for the head injury and Connor had lost track of time waiting for her to wake up and speak a coherent sentence to him.

Then there was the simple fact that sometimes he forgot to do it.

Anyway, he was reasonably sure they’d been stuck for around two months-ish, give or take a week or two. A deep dread was starting to grow inside him that they would never make it out of the past, that they would never see their friends and family ever again. A cold sweat broke out over him when he thought about it, but then he saw Abby’s blond hair (well, reasonably blond – her natural color was starting to break free thanks to the lack of hair care products in the ancient Jurassic) and was reassured that at least he wasn’t alone. He hoped Abby was taking the same comfort in him.

“Connor?”

“What’s up?” Connor blinked and shook himself, before peering down at the ground to see Abby staring up at him, hands on her hips.

“Are you coming?”

“Coming?” Connor blinked again, freezing in place as he racked his brain trying to think of what he was supposed to be doing. “Yes. Coming. To, uh…” Abby sighed and rolled her eyes. She reached down to the carpet of nettles and rocks, picking up a stick that she tossed at his head. He ducked. “Hey!”

“We’re not giving up, Con,” Abby said firmly, pinning him back in place with a level glare. “We are going to keep checking the direction Helen and Danny were heading. We know there’s an anomaly around there somewhere – at least there was one. Which means there’s a chance of it reopening.” She flung her arms out to encompass the vast emptiness – save for miles and miles of pine trees – around them. “It’s better than just rotting away here. We’ve been over this.”

“Right, I knew that.” Connor pulled on his gloves and gingerly made his way down the tree. He was proud of the fact that he no longer fell the last six feet every time he attempted it. The most he did was stumble a bit on the last step but he blamed that on the unevenness of the ground. “Coming, coming.”

Abby grumbled and muttered something he couldn’t hear under her breath, and he offered her a sheepish grin as he reached her side. She gave him a light punch in the arm in return, and then started walking briskly in the direction they’d been checking day in and day out for any clues.

Connor didn’t know what she was looking for, but then, he had no tracking skills. Back in the first few weeks after Connor had regained his mobility, she’d been able to tail Helen and Danny for quite some distance. It was slow going though, due to the fact that large predators liked to follow the same trails (and once again remembering the T-Rex, Connor shivered) which meant they had to move quickly, quietly and be ready to hide at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, rain had fallen and washed away most of the obvious signs that someone had been through. They also had to try and keep track of where they’d checked, so as not to confuse their own trail for Danny or Helen’s.

Today they were going to check out a cliff that had been their focus spot the day before but they’d been chased away by a pteranodon.

“Now today, we’re going to keep our eyes on the sky, yeah?” Abby poked Connor as they made their way towards the cliffs, skirting the huge boulders lining the base and climbing over the smaller ones.

“I was watching!” Connor protested. “Well, sort of. You know, it’s actually quite hard to watch for predators on the ground as well as in the sky at the same t—“

Abby put her hand over his mouth, and he subsided with a grumble. “Just be careful. I don’t want you being flown off for some hatchling’s dinner.”

“That wouldn’t happen.” He paused. “That _couldn’t_ happen. Right, Abby?”

She winked at him. “Just watch out.”

Connor wasn’t reassured by that, but he swallowed hard and gamely followed her as she moved nimbly amongst the rocks, keeping one eye on the sky.

A far-off shriek had them both diving for cover under a rocky overhang of one of the larger boulders. Abby stuck her head out and scouted the sky. “I don’t see anything.”

“Oh good,” Connor said, nodding quickly. His heart was beating like a trip hammer. “Check again?”

She rolled her eyes and shoved at him before crawling out after him. “I think it’s out hunting.”

“That was the sound of triumph then?”

Abby shrugged. “Or she missed her target and is shrieking in outrage.”

“Let’s move quickly then,” Connor decided and began to lead the way this time. They were able to make it to the base of the cliff with no problems. Solid rock walls sprung up all around them. Connor was glad to see the various outcroppings and overhangs littering the area – they would make lovely little hidey-holes in case anything big with sharp teeth decided to stop by. Behind him, Abby was stealthily creeping along the cliff base, eyes aimed skyward. “Anything?”

“Nothing.”

Connor suddenly froze, staring at the rock face in front of him. “Nope, something.” Forgetting all caution, he hurried forward and up the small, rocky hill to the cave walls. Along a boulder was a splash of dark. “Blood.”

“Last night’s dinner?” Abby asked, right at his heels. “Yummy.”

“Too old,” Connor said. “And not enough to be the remnants of a meal. I think.”

“What, you think it’s Helen’s or Danny’s?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Connor motioned around the whole area with his arm. “I think we should check this whole area carefully though.”

Abby nodded. “Good idea,” she said, giving him a warm smile. “I’ll check over there, you keep checking here.”

Connor examined the rest of the boulder and then along the edge of it. Nothing out of the ordinary though, and it wasn’t like he was expecting footprints to still be around after all this time. It had rained a few times in the last few months after all.

Still, hope sprang eternal, and all that.

They checked in silence, not wanting to draw any undue attention to themselves. Luckily it was warm out; Connor assumed most of the animals were dozing in the heat of the sun, instead of being as active as they tended to be during the dawn and dusk. He was clambering over some stones when he slipped on loose shale – a small cry escaped him as his foot slid out from underneath him and he fell onto his back, more stones falling free at his impact and trickling down the hill. “Ow!”

“Connor? You okay?” Abby called, sounding worried.

“I’m fine!” he gasped. “Just surprised, is all.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, wincing at the pull in his back muscles. “Well, that hurt.” He was about to stand up when a shadow flew over the ground in front of him, and he froze. “Abby?”

She was already on it, smart girl that she was. “Connor, get under the rocks! To your right!” He flicked his eyes to the right and saw an overhang not thirty feet away. Abby was already under it, leaning out and reaching her arm towards him. “Come on!”

“Coming!” He rolled over, gasping as pain shot down his legs from his tailbone, making him freeze for a moment. The shadow reappeared, and he looked back over his shoulder. He froze again.

A large, flying dinosaur, similar to the Anurognathus they’d seen at the golf course almost two years ago, but this one was bigger. Much bigger.

“Connor, move it!” Abby was screaming at him but he could do was stare at the huge, brightly colored animal as it soared closer. _Quetzalcoatlus,_ his shocked mind told him. One of the biggest flying dinosaurs of the Cretaceous. _And it’s about to crash into me!_

Connor yelped and scrambled to his knees, kicking off the rocks and pulling at the ground in an effort to cover it more quickly. Abby grabbed hold of his hand and yanked him under the dubious protection of the outcropping and Connor jerked his legs in after himself. The Quetzalcoatlus shrieked as it swooped down and hovered for a second in front of the opening, flapping his wings fiercely. The winds it kicked up were impressive, and they had to shield themselves from the dust and debris being swept their way. The beating of its wings was loud, almost drum-like, and Connor had to shout to make himself heard. “Can you back up?”

“I’m as far in as I can go!” Abby shouted back at him, clinging to his back. The Quetzalcoatlus shrieked again and stabbed its beak in their direction but couldn’t manage to turn its head towards the ground enough to manage it. A few seconds later, it pushed off, long talons scraping against the rock, and then the sound of beating wings was getting fainter. “Is it gone? What was it?”

“I don’t know, and it was a Quetzalcoatlus,” Connor said, panting heavily. “Hang on a second.” Not that he was all that eager to stick his head out, but they couldn’t very well stay there forever. He pulled himself forward and stuck out his hand. Wiggled his fingers. Nothing. A bit more and his whole arm was in the sun, waving frantically and then being jerked back inside. Still nothing. “Here goes nothing.” Connor carefully leaned forward and was about to stick his head out—

“Wait!”

Connor swore as he jumped and slammed his head into the roof of the cave-like crevice they were wedged into. “What?”

“Sorry,” Abby said apologetically, but passed him her compact from her pocket. “Check with this.”

“Oh yeah. Good idea. Much better than letting my tasty fingers be the test subject.” Connor snatched up the mirror and held it out, angling it so he could see the area above them. Nothing to the left, nothing to the right, and nothing straight up. “I think it’s gone.”

“Well, it won’t be for long,” Abby said ruefully. “It knows we’re here and that we’ll have to come out at some point. I think we should leave now while we’ve got the chance.”

“We didn’t finish searching the area,” Connor protested.

“Didn’t you ever hear that old saying, ‘he who cries and runs away, lives to cry another day’?” she asked, pushing past him and standing up.

Connor blinked. “Are you calling me a crybaby?”

Abby rolled her eyes and tugged on his arm. “Come on!”

“Yeah, right. I’m comin’, I just—“ his voice trailed off as something glinted at him from across the trail. “Abby, what’s that?”

“What’s what?” she asked, sounding flustered and impatient.

“Patience, Abby, patience.” Connor picked his way cautiously across the ground, keeping his eyes fixed on where the glint had appeared. “Watch the skies for me please – I don’t want to lose where I’m going.”

“Hurry, Connor,” she urged him.

Connor scanned the ground slowly, fully, taking in every rock, every pile, every leaf. One of these things is not like the other, he told himself, and slowed down even more. Then he saw it.

Black plastic or metal, a corner, sticking out of the ground, covered with dirt and dust, and half hidden by overgrown brush. Something definitely out of time and place. Connor lunged for it, ripping aside grass and dirt clods. When his fingers closed around sun-warmed metal, he thought for a minute he’d stopped breathing. “Abby?”

“Yeah?”

His heart was pounding like a bongo drum. “Abby, look!” He withdrew the battered modified anomaly-detector and held it in his trembling hands. The glass was cracked, and sand and dirt clogged every opening, wedged among the keys. He pressed the power button eagerly but nothing happened. He flipped it over and saw the back casing gone, one battery missing. “Damn it!”

Abby knelt down next to him. “Oh my god, is that—“ she broke off and reached out, gingerly touching the edge of the detector with one finger. “Connor, does it work?”

“I don’t know,” Connor breathed. “But we have spare batteries in the packs back at camp. If I clean it out and the batteries work, then we could be looking at our ticket home!”

Abby whooped and lunged at him, wrapping her arms around his next in excitement. He hugged her back and then pried her off so he could stare again at the detector. “What are you waiting for?” Abby jumped to her feet and began pulling at him. “Let’s go!”

“Yes, yeah, leggo!” Connor pulled his arm free. “You’re getting very… with the pulling and all.” He waved his arm at her. “It’s going to be longer than the other one soon enough.”

Abby laughed. “Whatever Connor. C’mon, let’s get back to camp. I don’t know about you but I am dying to get back to indoor plumbing and a hot shower!”

  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  


It didn't seem right. The ARC was humming with activity; fluorescent lights buzzing, power droning from the hundred of computers set up throughout the building, and the low mumbling tones of the ARC staff going about their daily jobs as though everything were absolutely normal. It just wasn't right.

Sarah Page raked her hands through her hair and once again tried to turn her focus back to the computer screen in front of her. That everything should continue on as normal, like nothing was wrong, nothing bad had happened, was grating against her nerves. By all rights, the ARC should have been like a morgue - silent, respectful of those who were gone. And they were gone - all of them. Every last member from the original team was either dead, or missing in time-space. Except for Lester, but he didn't count in her mind. Lester was in destructible apparently - much like a cockroach, though she'd never say that to his face.

The computer gave her a chiding beep; the coordinates she'd entered were incorrect. Again. A low growl of frustration escaped her and she punched in a second string of numbers, fingers jamming against the keys as though she were attempting to punish them for her failures. She was rewarded with a lighter, more cheerful beep this time and a green light. Coordinates accepted.

"One down, twenty thousand to go," she muttered ruefully, and stretched her arms out, interlocking her fingers and listening to her joints crack with a vague air of satisfaction.

"You'll get arthritis from that."

"That's an old wives tale, Becker," she said, stifling a yawn. "Tired, likely weaker joints perhaps, but not arthritis."

Captain Hilary Becker - sorry, that was Major now, she recalled - set a steaming mug of coffee on the desk next to the abused keyboard. "Any luck?"

"Little by little," Sarah sighed. She pushed herself away from the desk, scooping up the cup as she did so, and spun around on her chair so she was facing him. He looked as tired as she did, she noted absently. Pale, deep shadows were under his eyes. He likely wasn't sleeping much more than she was, but where she had her idea to work through, Becker was taking the loss of Abby, Connor and Danny deeply personally.

While she spent her time on the computer, trying to build the model Professor Cutter had once started in his lab with plastic tubing on her computer, Becker was stalking the ARC like a man possessed, determined not to let any security breaches infiltrate the sanctity of their base. Even as he took a ‘break’, so to speak, she noted the cleaning rag tucked into his belt, the bottle of fluid outlining his pocket, and his second favorite rifle in hand. Becker didn't seem to know the meaning of the word 'relax.' Then again, she thought with a grim tinge of amusement, neither did she these days.

Becker nodded at the computer screen. "Thought I heard a moment of triumph."

"One," she said, holding up her index finger. "Which makes two successful predictions - meaning ones that match coordinates we've been able to verify through us well… actually being there. Well, members of the team, that is."

"Which ones?"

"The anomaly where the team first found those giant insects, back when they were first starting out," Sarah said. "It's like trying to solve a mathematical equation with only a few of the numbers and thousands of possible answers. I'm an archaeologist, not a mathematician." She gestured at the computer screen where several glowing yellow lines floated in a three dimensional box, forming a loop. "Using our security cameras, I managed to plug in some of the anomalies on a shape that resembles what popped out of the tube when Connor and I were working on it. But without specifics, it's all guesswork. I had the one match up by accident, I think."

Becker rolled his eyes as he automatically checked the cartridge on the rifle and then began dismantling it on the empty desk next to her. "Give yourself a bit more credit than that, Sarah."

"I'd love to," she said with a small sigh. "But really, this is all taking too long. If we could just find someone who can take what we have and help us put those damn tubes back together - but here, on the computer - we're one step closer to being able predict the anomalies like Cutter was trying to do. And we could even be able to open them, like Helen could." Her hands tightened around her coffee mug in frustration. "Helen had the technology from the future, it must have originated here, in the ARC! We're the only ones working on it, the only ones with anything close to what she was using." She gestured to Connor's anomaly detector. "That's the start. This - "she pointed to her computer. "- is the next step. But I can't make it work, Becker! I can't think like him, I'm not Cutter!" Suddenly she realized her voice had steadily been rising and that she was shouting at Becker. She blinked, eyes darting around the room to see several scientists trying very hard to not stare outright at her. Her cheeks suddenly went hot and she ducked her head, mumbling a vague apology at Becker.

A low chuckle met her apology, and she raised her head again, glaring at him. "It’s not funny!"

"You're right, it's not," Becker said, setting the gun down and holding his hand sup in self-defense. "But good lord woman, how long have you been holding that in?"

She blinked. Then a giggle escaped her, and she covered her mouth with the hand not preoccupied with keeping her coffee from spilling on to the floor. "Quite a while, actually," she snickered, a small snort escaping her. It was enough to make both of them start howling.

A few minutes later, their laughter dying down, Sarah wiped her eyes with her thumbs, mentally thanking the heavens she'd stopped seeing makeup as a priority – sweat and mascara did not mix and neither did tears. "Oh... I think I needed that."

"You and me both." Becker picked his discarded rag up and resumed his methodical cleaning of the rifle barrel. "So, do you feel a bit better now?"

"Yes," she said. "At least, enough to give it one more crack before I give up for the evening. And you?" She raised an eyebrow at him. "When will you be going off-duty?"

He shrugged, focusing on the gun in his lap. "I found that cot Connor was using when he was kipping here for a bit. I can grab a nap when you leave."

"You don't go home?"

"Not much to go home to," Becker said mildly. He held the rifle up and peered down the barrel. Apparently satisfied, he began putting it back together. "Besides, this way I can be on hand in case of any emergencies."

There had to be something wrong with that, but Sarah couldn't figure it out. She desperately needed a nap of her own. "Once more then," she said, and spun back around to face the computer.

 

_____________________________________________________________________

 

Jensen was in a foul mood.

It was fairly obvious to anyone who saw him. Pooch tried to handle it by surreptitiously slipping the hacker his favorite treats and snacks stolen from god only knew where, considering they were in the asshole of nowhere, South America. Clay assumed Pooch kept a hidden stash on him for just such an occasion - becoming a daddy had seemed to bring out the 'be prepared for anything' to an insane level in him, and a cranky hacker must not have been much different from a cranky infant: ply with treats until they shut up. Unfortunately, Jensen wasn't talking much, so it didn't seem to be helping.

Aisha wasn’t much help either. In fact, she seemed to be channeling Roque, what with the muttered threats under her breath as she continuously sent uneasy glances in Jensen's direction. She hadn't been with them yet a year, but she'd learned very quickly that a quiet Jensen was a dangerous Jensen. Her method of coping was to threaten, play with her shiny weapons (there was that Roque-channeling again) and stalk around the campsite like a restless cat. To keep her from going stir-crazy, Clay told her to go with Pooch on a supply run. She bared her teeth at him but went without complaint. Maybe a hiss though. He smirked.

Speaking of cats...Clay watched as Cougar sat solidly beside Jensen, meticulously cleaning his sniper rifle for the thirteen-thousandth time. Cougar had been the one to alert Clay to the situation with a tilt of his hat and a significant look in Jensen's direction. Once assured that Clay was on it, he'd taken up his own watch next to the hacker.

Just being there seemed to calm Jensen a little bit, even if it didn’t make him talk. Then again, there was no need for constant chatter between those two, except when there was, and sometimes it was an order. Clay didn't give a damn about anyone's particular tastes as it related to what team they played for, but during off-time, when it got too quiet, the rest of the team knew it was a matter of time before the silence was broken by sounds Pooch swore he'd resort to puncturing his ear drums if he ever heard again.

Regarding the situation at hand however, Clay didn't know how he wanted to handle this, exactly. There were a few ways that he had at his disposal - tried and true methods of bringing a Loser out of their stupor, but getting Jensen drunk when he was silent was probably not the best option. A drunk Jensen was a damn-near suicidal Jensen who would accept any and all dares when he was in a good mood. In a bad mood, he might decide to blow up whatever was pissing him off. Which, ironically enough, was his second option, though Clay wasn't eager to mix a moody Jensen with high-explosives just yet. That was indeed a last resort.

Talking was out - the hacker did it better than he could anyway. Ordering him would work but he had nothing to order him with - they were in between missions at the moment due to Max apparently laying low. They'd tracked him to Chile but the warehouse in El Loa was a dead end - cleared out, likely only hours before they got there. Aisha was waiting to hear from one of her contacts about where to try next.

Giving Jensen something to hack would be ideal but without a starting point, it would be impossible to have him track Max from scratch; hence the waiting from Aisha. He could make something up, ask Jensen to hack a security system without getting caught as practice to keep him from getting rusty (laughable) - but letting Jensen play with random countries and their government websites was also what got them fatwa’s issued against them in three countries and standing arrest orders in two more at the same time. Besides, Jensen already seemed to be hacking something - he hadn't moved from his computer in over four hours. Clay stifled a curse. Talking it was, then.

Before he could act on his idea, Jensen suddenly stood up and pushed away from the computer. He strode over to Clay, a wild look in his eyes. Clay bit back the urge to step back, and met the hacker’s eyes calmly. "What's up?"

"I need to go to London," Jensen said quietly. His hands flexed into fists at his sides. "My cousin is missing."

"Your cousin," Clay echoed, feeling a pain start at the base of his neck. It was the same pain he often felt when talking to his men. Jensen in particular.

Jensen was nodding his head. “He’s disappeared and his team can’t find him. I need to help them.” He was starting to wiggle in place, a sure sign of edginess.

“Calm down, soldier,” Clay ordered gruffly. “Explain.”

“It’s kinda hard to explain.” Jensen bit his lower lip and worried it for a minute. “I mean, really boss-man. It’s a ‘seeing is believing’ kinda deal.”

“And you need to go because?”

“Because according to the files I hacked into, my cousin’s been gone two months, give or take a week, and no one knows where he is!”

“And you do?”

“Not…exactly,” Jensen hedged. “But I know how to find him, and I start by going to London.”

Clay squeezed his eyes shut. “Jensen…”

“Boss… please.” Clay opened his eyes to Jensen looking at him with a pleading expression he hadn’t seen in years. It made the hacker look about ten years younger. “He’s my baby cousin. I taught him everything he knows. Other than Jessie and Hannah, he’s the only other family I have that’s worth something to me.”

That was a low blow. Clay knew the reason his team stood behind him and backed him up the way they did was because he stood by them in their time of need too. _Looks like we gotta ‘nother field trip comin’ up,_ he thought resignedly, and nodded. “You gotta sell Pooch and Aisha on this,” he said sternly. He didn’t bother mentioning Cougar – the Sniper would follow Jensen without a word of protest. “And me.”

“Soon as they get back,” Jensen said. “It’s gonna be an interesting show, that’s for sure.” He reached into a side pocket on his duffel bag and pulled out his wallet. Flipping through the numerous photos of Jessie and his niece Hannah, he finally stopped on an older picture that was wrinkled and creased from years in the wallet. A young Jake Jensen stood next to a small, grinning imp of a boy.

Clay peered at the photo. “That him?”

“Yup. He’s about eight in this photo. First time I ever met him.”

  
+++++++++++++++++++++  
(flashback)

  
 _  
Jake was bored. He hadn’t wanted to come along on this stupid trip but he’d had no choice. His dad ordered him along to help with packing up stuff but since they’d been there, there’d been nothing but boring meetings his dad kicked him out of. Now he was stuck in this big, half-empty house with absolutely nothing to do._

 _“Thanks for dying, Uncle Morrie,” he grumbled. “Couldn’t you have waited until I was old enough to leave the house?” Stupid abusive fucker. He’d barely been able to control his cheer when his dad had somberly broken the news to him and his mother._

 _“Hello?”_

 _Jake blinked and looked up. A woman was walking in the open front door, eyes darting around as though expecting someone to jump out. She looked vaguely familiar, though Jake couldn’t quite place her. “Hi.”_

 _The woman jumped, pressing a hand to the front of her chest, half-burying it among the folds of her billowing blouse. “Oh!” A small smile broke out on her face. ‘You startled me, Jacob.”_

 _Jake felt his spine stiffen. No one called him that. “My name’s Jake,” he corrected her firmly. “How’d you know?”_

 _The woman’s smile grew a bit more. “You look just like your mother.” The smile disappeared. “And your father.”_

 _“Gee, thanks.” Jake suddenly noticed a small head peeking around her skirt; dark, tousled hair, huge, wary eyes glued on him. “Hey there, little man.” He’d always been good with kids._

 _The boy’s eyes grew even wider before he ducked his head behind his mother again. She laughed gently and moved hand around to place on his head and gently guide him around her. “Now, now, Connor. Don’t be shy. Say hello to your cousin, Jake.”_

 _Cousin? Jake squinted at the woman and then his jaw dropped. “Auntie Paige?”_

 _She nodded. “I suppose I do look a bit different now.”_

 _A bit? Jake remembered the obligatory family pictures exchanged during every holiday season. Aunt Paige had been heavier, dressed in dark frumpy clothes. She didn’t wear make-up. Her hair fell into her face in almost every picture, as though she were trying to hide from the camera, and Jake hadn’t realized until years later, watching his mother do the same thing, that’s exactly what she was trying to do. After all, no one wanted to see a big shiner in the family portraits. “Wow. I didn’t even recognize you.” How could he? The woman in front of him was about thirty pounds lighter, wearing a loose, cream colored blouse and a swirling gypsy-style skirt. Her hair was cut shorter, lighter with feathered ends that wisped out around her face. Her make-up was lightly applied everywhere except her eyes; they were outlined and made up with bright shades that brought out her natural eye color. Jake had the sudden thought she was making up for years of hiding her eyes from the world. “You look awesome.”_

 _“Thank you Jake.” She gave the door to the meeting room a wary stare. “I suppose they’re all on there?”_

 _“My dad, the lawyer, a couple of Unc’s buddies,” Jake ticked off on his fingers. “You going in?”_

 _She nodded. “I wonder if you might do me a small favor.” She gestured to Connor who was still standing silently by her side. “Would you mind watching him while I’m in there? I hadn’t been looking forward to bringing him in with me.”_

 _“Afraid they might start something?”_

 _“The house still has my name on it,” she said, shrugging. “We never officially divorced. Despite what everyone else claims they’re entitled to, this house is mine.” She shuddered. “They can have everything else. Clean it out for all I care. I plan on selling it as soon as the paper work is finished.”_

 _Jake nodded. “Probably a good idea.” He didn’t need her to explain why she wanted to sell it – he had a pretty good guess. After all, his dad was uncle Morrie’s younger brother, and apparently Uncle Morrie had taught his little brother everything he knew. At least one of them was dead. “No prob, I’ll watch the squirt.”_

 _“M’not a squirt!” came an indignant little voice._

 _“How old are you?” Jake challenged with a smile._

 _Connor glared at him. “I’m eight years old!”_

 _Jake nodded. “So you’re a squirt.”_

 _Paige laughed. “All right boys. I’m going in. You two, feel free to explore the house until we’re done.” She sighed. “I expect there will be some shouting and language not fit for the young before we’re through.”_

 _“Gotcha.” Jake held out his hand to Connor. “C’mon kidlet, let’s go play.”_

 _Little Connor looked warily at him, and then at his mother who nodded and shooed him on. Slowly he reached forward and put his hand in Jakes. Jake tugged him forward and they went down the hall to the staircase._  


+++++++++++++++++++++  


Jake was being moody and broody again. Reminiscing had a habit of doing that to soldiers. Clay kicked him in the foot, causing the hacker to look up. “So what did you mean by ‘his team’? What does your cousin do?” Clay folded his arms, eying his hacker with trepidation.

“Okay, I gotta be honest,” Jensen said frankly. “You’re not gonna believe me if I tell you everything my cousin was doing. Hell, I didn’t believe it at first, and I was going through his files and spying on the security cams in their building.”

“My interest is piqued,” Pooch commented.

“Bottom line, my cousin was doing some really hush-hush work for the Home Office – so hush-hush the Home Office only knows part of what they do.”

“Like what we do?” Clay asked.

“Not even close,” Jensen said with a grin. “Seriously, I’ll show you some videos that will make your eyes pop open later, but the main thing is, my cousin disappeared when they were working on one of their projects.”

“What makes you think you can find him?” Aisha asked. She stood there, arms folded and eyebrow arched. Clay was worried he might have to step in – Jensen was afraid of Aisha when he was in a normal mood, but this wasn’t a normal situation – but Jensen only stared back at her, his own eyebrow raised in response.

“Are you saying we can’t do better than London’s finest?” Aisha acknowledged that with a shrug, and Jensen continued. “Look, there’s a girl working in Connor’s office trying to solve the puzzle on how to find him. Problem is, while she’s got a decent working brain and a basic knowledge of math and computers, she ain’t me. They need someone who can make that system sit up and beg to give out the information.” Jensen jerked his thumb at his chest. “I can do it.”

It wasn’t bragging. Clay knew damn well that Jensen was brilliant – he had a genius level IQ that had to be seen to be believed and he could do things with a laptop that bordered on obscenely amazing. If Jensen said he could do it, Clay had no doubts whatsoever that he wasn’t blowing smoke.

“What about Max?” Pooch pointed out quietly. “We know he’s got a company here – he hasn’t shown yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. Do we bag this operation so we can go and help out your cousin?”

“Jensen’s cousin is not my priority,” Aisha interrupted coldly. “I fund our operations to find Max so we can take him out once and for all. I am not funding your own private vendettas.”

“Not a problem,” Jensen retorted, just as coldly. “I didn’t ask for your money. And really, I’m not asking you guys for your help. I’m saying I need to go to London. I wouldn’t say no to a little help, but with or without you, I’m going.” His face softened just a touch, as he pleaded with Clay. “He’s my baby cousin, Clay. It’s like if Jesse or Hannah were missing. I’d go in a heartbeat.”

“Hell, I’m in,” Pooch said suddenly. “It’s family, man. You guys would be there if something happened to Jolene or Diante.”

Jensen and nodded. He didn’t look at Cougar – Clay already knew that Cougar would follow Jensen to the ends of the earth if necessary. That was two down. He sighed, throwing his hands up in the air. “What the hell. I haven’t been to London in years anyway.” Aisha looked angry, but she gave a curt nod. She was a Loser, which meant she went where they went. She didn’t have to like it though, and Clay knew he’d be hearing about it – in great detail and at great volume – later on. “I’m guessing you have a plan?”

Jensen suddenly looked sheepish, nodding. “Flights are booked – we fly out of El Loa tomorrow at oh-eight hundred.”

Cougar snorted and tilted the brim of his hat down, turning around, presumably Clay thought, to start packing. Pooch shook his head, letting out a chuckle. “Never a doubt in your mind, huh Jensen?”

Jensen shot a quick look at Aisha and then quirked a grin back at the transport specialist. “Not a single one.”

“So what’s a Jensen male doing unleashed in unsuspecting London?” Pooch asked with a smirk. “I can’t believe you have family out there without supervision. Or was he about to be picked up for hacking like you were and so he split the country?”

Jensen stuck his tongue out at Pooch. “Actually, he’s London born and bred. His dad and my dad are brothers. Uncle Morrie was an expat – worked for some engineering company. Your typical white-collar stiff.”

“Your cousin’s last name is Temple,” Clay said archly. “Somethin’s missing from your story, kid.”

“’Cause I ain’t done yet.” Jensen waggled his finger admonishingly. “Don’t interrupt story time, children. It’s not polite.” Pooch sniggered.

“Get on with it!” Aisha barked.

“Okay, okay! Well, he married a local gal and got her knocked up.” Jensen scowled. “Knocked around too. He was a real charmer, you know? Well, about two months after Connor was born, Auntie Paige left his abusive ass and took back her maiden name – Temple. Uncle Morrie died years ago from a heart attack.” He snorted derisively. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, let me tell you. Anyway, that’s when I met Connor and Auntie Paige – Dad flew us over to pack up Unc’s stuff and bring his ashes back stateside.”

Cougar frowned faintly at that, but didn’t say anything. Pooch sighed, rubbed his hands together, and then stood up briskly. “Guess I’mma get my stuff all together seein’s how we’re gonna have an early morning.” As he passed by Jensen, he reached out and knuckled the blond’s head roughly. “I thought you white boys liked to sleep in. Couldn’t get anything after ten, huh?”

Jensen gave him a brief smile. “Your bad luck, man.” He frowned, looking twitchy. “I’m gonna go back and keep looking through my cousin’s notes. I downloaded the contents of his main computer to Priscilla but we’ve been busy lately. There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t gone through other than the most recent.”

“I still want to know what it is about your cousin’s job that you think we won’t believe,” Aisha spoke up.

Jensen paused on his way back to the room he was sharing with Cougar. “Aisha… seriously. This is something you need to see to believe.”  


  
++++++++++++++++++++++++  
End chapter 1


	2. Don't Shoot!

 

 **Title:** Losing Time

 **Chapter 2:** _Don't Shoot! (A, B and C)_

 **Author:** Stormy1x2 (traveling_storm)

 **Words (this chapter):** 8,500-ish

 **Notes** : again, thank you to nickdevilance for the poking, the prodding and the suggesting!

 

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

* * *

"Dinosaurs," Pooch said in disbelief. "You expect me to believe your cousin chases dinosaurs."

They were standing around Jensen's laptop watching illegally downloaded files from a secret headquarters in London named the ARC, and despite watching one of the videos in particular four times already, there was still a general feeling of 'not-believing-ness' that Jensen was sensing. "He doesn't chase dinosaurs," Jensen corrected him. "He tracks down time-anomalies and contains the animals that come through it."

"From the past," Aisha blurted. "Animals from the past."

"Like dinosaurs," Pooch repeated like an album stuck on the needle.

Clay scratched his head and looked sideways at his corporal. "Jensen?"

"Yeah, boss?"

"Are you drunk?"

"Not as such, no."

"Am I?" Pooch muttered as an aside to Cougar. The sniper snorted and gave a half-shrug.

"Play it again," Clay ordered. Jensen complied and hit a key. They watched in silence as a huge T-Rex look-alike moved towards the camera. A golden flow streamed out from behind it but it was hard to focus on as giant teeth suddenly picked off the screaming reporter next to the cameraman. The camera fell to the ground just as huge, blood-stained jaws swung around, and then a giant foot came down next to it. A gurgling scream was abruptly cut off. The lens was cracked from the fall, but it remained recording, aimed at the wall. A distinctive noise caught their attention again as a dark shape moved swiftly across the fractured camera path – a helicopter. Not military issue, Clay was certain. The sound was wrong. Seconds later another shape lumbered past in pursuit – it was the dinosaur again. There was a strange humming sound and then the sounds of someone – a female – ordering someone to wait. Suddenly the camera was picked up and a soldier looking half-halfheartedly at the screen just before it switched off.

"They uploaded that video onto their private server at the ARC," Jensen said. "It was easy to get it from there. Child's play, really." He blew on his fingers, buffing them on his shirt.

"Yeah, yeah, you're a genius," Clay said, still staring at the hacker's laptop.

 

* * *

As was his custom, Lester stood behind the railings on the second level, just in front of his office, and watched the various scientists, computer techs and other ARC personnel run about the floor below him like mice in a maze. It had been over a month, but it still struck him as terribly odd to not see Connor perched at his usual table, inventing yet another gadget to help them in their work. There wasn't a layer of dust covering his tools and computer, or any such nonsense - the ARC's janitorial staff were paid very well to be very thorough - but it was still a rather lonely picture indeed.

His eyes flicked over to one of the labs that ringed the first floor main operations room. The wide glass panels gave him clear sight into the room - tall plants and flowers from by-gone eras still growing from the care of the other scientists, but seeming to lack the vibrancy they'd had when Abby was constantly monitoring them, spritzing them every other hour to keep them looking especially shiny and lush. He stared at them for a long moment before shaking his head and moving along in a check-up that had become almost ritualistic since the decimation of his team.

Sarah Page was visible in another lab. She was settled yet again in front of her computer screen, attempting to recreate digitally what Nick Cutter had done months ago in his own workshop in an effort to make a tangible recreation of the anomaly prediction matrix. She had been devoted to putting it back together, figuring it was the key to retrieving their lost teammates, but despite the assistance she had from the other lab techs, none of them seemed to have a mind that worked like Professor Cutter's. Their efforts were slow and cumbersome. They needed another mathematician but granting just anyone authorization into the ARC was impossible.

Lester had dealt with geniuses before, and they all wanted public recognition. Pulling a specialist in to work on the matrix would be dangerous, security-wise and besides, he really didn't want to deal with the additional paperwork.

Of the team, only he, Sarah and Becker were left. The other techs just didn't have the right skills to help them - one lab tech went out with Sara and Becker and had fainted at the sight of a really big and supremely annoyed Archeopteryx. Another had gone trigger-happy and killed a harmless juvenile Scutellosaurus. Sarah had been distraught - Lester assumed she was taking Abby's place temporarily as the personal champion of all time-lost creatures - and even Becker had been pissed off enough over that particular gaffe to storm over and yank the gun away hard enough to twist one of the man's fingers in the process.

They had always been extremely lucky in finding just the right sort of people to handle the business of anomalies in the past. Apparently that luck was starting to run out. The ones they really needed now were gone.

Lester abruptly realized his thoughts were turning a bit maudlin - or frankly, quite soppy, at the very least - and so he snorted once, shrugging his shoulders and adjusting the lapels of his obscenely expensive Italian suit. He tugged on his tie, fingers working the knot briefly, and then he turned and strode back into his office.

It was time to do something he'd been putting off for a while now, but it was becoming quite apparent he had no choice. He couldn't take charge of their team - he had far too many other things to do. Not to mention his need to depend on Home Office rules and protocol - half the reason for the team's success was their 'fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants' ways of making things happen, and being present in the field. Their sheer disregard for the rules tended to work in their favor, and he had no intention of throwing off the team dynamic at this particular juncture.

Then, there was also the camaraderie that developed within the team as a result of dealing with life and death situations every day, and as their boss, while he supported them whole-heartedly and as best he could, he had to appear to remain neutral to be completely effective.

Which meant they needed someone else. And quite frankly, there was only one person he could think of that was qualified for the job. Drumming his fingers on the varnished wood top of his desk, Lester stared at the phone. Then he sighed, picked up the receiver and dialed. A moment later a woman's voice answered with a cheery 'hello'. Lester rubbed the bridge of his nose, massaging away the burgeoning headache he could feel forming, and said, "Hello Jenny. It's Lester. Have you got a moment?"

* * *

 _(Flashback)_

 _  
_

* * *

_  
_

_There was nothing in the first room at the top of the hall. Jake was half-heartedly poking his nose into the rooms, but Connor was apparently quick to get over his apprehension. The little boy was suddenly darting around, eyes wide, refusing to relinquish his hold on Jake's hand. Jake figured some of the house must have seemed familiar to him, even though his Aunt had probably left around Connor's third birthday, taking the kid with her. "Jake, look!"_

 _Jake blinked at the carved doors ahead of them. "Neat," he commented, moving forward to run his hand along the smooth edges. "Custom work. Probably costly too."_

" _Huh?"_

" _Nothing, Con." Jake smiled at the squirt staring at the door curiously. He really was an adorable little devil. "C'mon, let's check it out."_

 _Like the rest, the door was unlocked. Pushing it open, Jake realized they must be in what used to be his uncle's study. Books lined both walls on glossy, polished shelves, ending at either end at the large picture window that lined the whole back wall. Suddenly his eyes fell on the computer perched on the old-oak desk. "Score!"_

" _That's Daddy's computer," Connor said unexpectedly._

 _Jake glanced at him. "Yeah?"_

 _Connor nodded, still staring at the computer._

" _Let's see if there's any games on it then." Jake moved forward and one hand went to turn it on._

 _Suddenly Connor was there, yanking on his arm. "No!"_

 _Jake froze. "What's up, Connor?"_

 _Connor repeated stubbornly, "That's Daddy's computer."_

" _So?"_

 _Connor's eyes dropped to the floor, and he began nervously moving one foot around. "No touching the computer," he recited was apparently was an often-repeated phrase. "Good boys don't touch the computer."_

 _Jake silently cursed his uncle. Boy did that ever sound familiar. He was almost afraid to ask. "What about bad boys, Con?"_

 _Connor's scared eyes flitted to the side, and Jake's blood froze as he took in the wooden cane leaning against the bookshelf. "No hits," Connor said quietly. "No touching the computer._

" _Goddam old fuck's lucky he's already fucking dead," Jake seethed quietly. Even his dad had just stuck to his own hands._

" _Huh?"_

" _Never mind, sprout." Jake knelt beside his cousin. "Listen, kid. Your dad's not here, okay? He's not coming back. He can't hit you. Even if he could, I wouldn't let him."_

 _Connor studied Jake carefully, as though looking through him to see if he were telling the truth. He bit his lower lip, and then tilted his head. "Do you mean it?"_

 _Jake nodded solemnly. "Cross my heart."_

" _Okay." Connor nodded back, trustingly._

 _Jake was half in love with the kid. If having a baby brother would have been like having a little Connor running around, maybe he wouldn't have protested the idea so much when his sister was born. Connor was cool, whereas his little sister was pure evil. Cute, but evil. "All right then. Let's fire this puppy up!"_

 _Connor giggled. "S'not a puppy!" he protested. "S'a computer!"_

" _So it is," Jake conceded. He cursed as the monitor sprung to life. "It's also password protected." He locked his fingers together and stretched them out until he heard a crack, and then glanced at Connor, inviting him to sit on the big chair with him. "C'mon kiddo. You're about to get your first lesson in Hacking 101."_

 _  
_

* * *

_  
_

Sarah was convinced the world was working against her. The red beeps were becoming a hated noise, one that made her grind her teeth every time she heard it. Just as she was thinking about that, it went off again, deleting the last set of coordinates she'd input.

"I hate this bloody thing!" Sarah smacked the screen with the flat of her hand and then yelped in pain. Shaking her hand out, she buried her face in the other, groaning loudly and leaning forward to thunk head and hand together against the computer. "Why! Won't! You! Work?"

"Breaking it won't be very effective either," came a quietly amused voice – and a familiar voice at that.

Sarah's head shot up. "You..." she breathed, and then whirled around to see Jenny Lewis leaning against the door. The time away had obviously done her some good. When they'd last seen her, she had been recently revived from nearly freezing to death. Before that, long hours, the difficult job of running the team and doing PR for the ARC, plus the shock of learning she had once been someone else entirely - well, it had taken its toll on her, leaving her pale with eyes dark and puffy from exhaustion and strain. The fungus-monster had been the final straw.

Now though, she looked tanned, as though she'd spent some time on a beach somewhere. Her hair was pinned back, and her make-up was minimal, the way she'd taken to wearing it after she'd taken over Cutter's position. In the beginning, she'd dressed the way a public relations manager should - bright, heavily made up in case of impromptu interviews and cameras, with fancy clothes that she'd quickly learned were extremely impractical in their line of work. Case in point, she was dressed casually in a pair of denim jeans, a dark tank top and cropped jacket. No jewelry was to be seen. Loose and relaxed, she looked so much better than the last time Sarah had seen her.

Sarah realized she was staring and pushed herself up away from the computer. "Jenny!" One step, then another, and then Jenny was meeting her halfway. A quick handshake became a warm hug, two old friends greeting each other. The initial shock was wearing off and Sarah pulled back and looked at her friend and former colleague with a wide grin. "You look fabulous!"

"Thanks! You look..." Jenny cocked her head and gave her small, sympathetic smile in return. "Tired. Good, but very tired."

"You got that right," Sarah sighed. Then she blinked, furrowing her brows. "Is this a social visit?"

Jenny gave a rueful chuckle and shook her head. Then she spread her arms out, flicking her eyes around the room with exaggeration. "I'm back!"

"That's great!" Sarah blurted out, clapping her hands. Then she slammed both hands over her mouth, looking at Jenny with large eyes. "I mean... Jenny... I'm sorry. I know you wanted out of this, but-" she broke off and looked down, raking a hand through her hair agitatedly, before looking back up. "Oh Jenny, we need you. Have you heard-"

"I know about Abby and Connor. And Danny." Jenny squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I can't believe they're gone."

"They're gone but they're not dead-gone," Sarah said determinedly. "I won't believe it until I see—" she cut herself off. "Well, you know."

"Lester mentioned you were working on Cut..."Jenny took a deep breath. "Cutter's matrix. He said you think we can find them."

Sarah nodded. "If we can get the matrix back up, if we can recreate it, we can find an anomaly that will take us to where they are, maybe reopen the one that closed after they went through. I mean, the key, the technology Helen was using to open anomalies, that tech had to originate here, in the ARC. We're the only ones doing this sort of work and we did discover that the buildings in the future were part of the ARC."

"The predators come from the ARC?" Jenny gasped.

"They come from the future where the anomaly happens to materialize in the ARC, yes," Sarah corrected her. "Becker's team found our logo on the walls during one of their checks. Maybe this, all that's happened in the past few months is what triggered it - what made us start making the anomaly 'maps' and anomaly 'openers' in the first place."

"Openers?"

"You have a lot of catching up to do."

"Apparently." Jenny looked past her to the computer where rotating, pixilated bars with dates pinned along their lengths intersected and spun around the screen. "It does look like what he was doing, doesn't it?"

"It's a start." Sarah actually growled in frustration, turning to glare at her computer. "But this was Cutter's baby, and while I get the gist of it, making it a reality is proving to be exceptionally difficult. I need a proper mathematician, or a time- spacial, fractal-whatever expert, or at the very least, someone brilliant enough to take this on and figure it out faster than what I'm doing."

"You're doing fine, Sarah," Jenny said in what Sarah assumed was an attempt to be soothing. While the effort was appreciated, the reality wasn't so easily reassured.

"Too slowly," she said. "It's going too slow." Before she could stop herself, a choked sob escaped her throat. Weeks of working and fretting and stressing and at the same time, decidedly NOT thinking about her lost friends, suddenly catapulted to the front of her mind. A hand whipped up to her mouth in a poor attempt to prevent another one from escaping. "Jenny, it's been almost two months. They had no supplies other than weapons and a first aid kit. No survival gear. The odds of them being alive are so unbelievably slim..."

"Shall we give up, then?" Jenny asked, sounding somewhat casual in her phrasing. "Such a remote chance of survival... we should be focusing our efforts on the anomalies themselves."

"We will NOT give up on them!" Sarah protested, snapping her flashing eyes to meet Jenny - who was smiling at her. Sarah groaned, realizing what Jenny had done, shaking her head. "Oi... it's not fair to use reverse psychology on someone who's been running on four hours of sleep a night for the last month."

Jenny opened her mouth but before she could say anything, a soldier burst into the room, skidding to an abrupt halt and firing off a hasty salute. "Ma~am, sorry for interrupting, but Major Becker's team just arrived."

Sarah frowned. "Why didn't he call me?"

The soldier shrugged. "With all due respect ma~am, he said he did."

"What?" Sarah slapped her hands over her pockets, patting herself down. When her phone failed to materialize, she bit her lip. "Oh please don't tell me I lost it. I still have fourteen months left on my contract!" Jenny coughed; Sarah rolled her eyes. "Not helpful!"

Jenny held up her hands. "I didn't say a word!" But she was grinning. Then she blinked, eyes focusing on something, and she strode across the room to where Sarah's lab coat that she wore when using her chemicals, was draped haphazardly over a chair. A moment of rooting through it, and then she held up Sarah's phone triumphantly. "I believe you were looking for this?" She glanced at the screen. "And set to vibrate, hmmm. You must have high hopes in those waves being able to reach you over here."

"Oh hush." Sarah accepted the phone and thumbed in the password, wincing as she saw six missed calls and two text messages. "Oh dear."

"Let's go," Jenny urged, and the two of them followed the foot-soldier to the main room.

Becker was just pushing through the door at the end of the hallway when they met up with him. He did a double-take when he saw who was with Sarah. "Jenny."

"Hello Becker," she said, holding her hand out. Sarah smiled as Becker pushed her hand aside to give her a hug of his own. "It's good to see you."

"It's good to see you too." He pulled back, still smiling at her. Then his gaze swiveled to Sarah's - she winced again as she took in the admonition on his face. "Do we need to go over the basic rules regarding communication and why it is so important to be able to reach one another?"

"I know, I'm sorry," Sarah apologized, wringing her hands. "I just... it got hot, and I took my lab coat off and I was so into what I was doing I didn't hear anything-"

"I wasn't aware 'vibrate' made a loud noise," Becker said musingly. "I mean, that is why people set their phones on it in the cinemas, yes?"

"And now you're just being obnoxious." Sarah poked him in the chest. "I am very, _very_ sorry. Can we move past this and tell me what was so important?"

Becker pushed one swinging door open; Jenny got the other. "My team finally recovered something interesting."

Jenny looked sideways at him. "Recovered?"

Sarah nodded. "From the future anomaly site."

"The one with the predators?"

"The one and the same." Ever since the day Danny, Abby and Connor had disappeared through time, Becker's team had been systematically sweeping the area, quadrant by quadrant. It took mass amounts of fire power and sonic grenades and an area was never 'clear' for good. The predators always came back, no matter how many of them were killed. The giant insects had nowhere near the predators intelligence levels and were just as abundant as the insects in their own time, which was why, nearly two months later, they still weren't finished checking the buildings.

Becker's team went in every day, armed to the teeth and suited up with specially developed protection - double-strength anti-stab vests (front and back) four times stronger than Kevlar. Neck guards of the same material attached to helmets that could withstand a bullet at point blank range, leather and Kevlar bodysuits to protect everything else. It added almost fifty pounds of weight to each man in addition to the weapons they carried but they were well worth the effort and expense - thus far, Becker had only lost two men since that day, and one was due to the soldier idiotically taking off his helmet because he was too hot. A giant flying ant sliced his head off not three minutes later.

They were checking out different sections, short jaunts only. Head-cams recorded everything in case they had to run without a close-up inspection - the videos were examined carefully by their lab technicians for any clues, any shred of evidence of what had happened to their friends. It had been disturbing to realize that the ancient, half-destroyed buildings, the rusted cars and the abandoned tech lying around the entire area were in fact the remnants of what was once the ARC. There were no papers lying about to give them answers, having disintegrated long ago, and the few banks of computers they'd been able to find to date had been completely destroyed. But now Becker's team had found something he obviously thought was worthwhile. "What did you find?"

Becker smirked and pulled a small metal-and-plastic square out of his pocket, holding it up in front of her eyes. "Does this look familiar?"

"Oh my god," Sarah gasped as she realized what she was looking at, and snatched it out of Becker's hands, turning it over in her own. It was the hand-held device that Helen had used to track and open anomalies, like the day she had (in her guise as a strange woman from the future) at the ATV campgrounds with the prehistoric rhinoceros herd.

Well - it was _like_ the one she'd used. This one was older, the black casing cracked. Dust and dirt caked the machine, and the display screen was badly chipped. There was no obvious power source, but even so, it was still a positive find. "Becker, once again you are my hero!"

"What is that?" Jenny asked blankly.

Sarah whirled around and waved the device at Jenny excitedly. "This, Jenny, _this_ little machine can find, track and open anomalies! The 'opener' I was telling you about!"

Jenny blinked. "What?"

"With this - well, with a _working_ version of this, we don't have to chase down random anomalies and hope that one of them will magically lead us to Danny, Abby and Connor!" Sarah flipped the device over again, running her fingers almost reverently across the scarred surface. "We can open an anomaly on our own!"

"But we don't know where they are,' Jenny protested. "I mean, I don't want to be the dream-crusher here but as I recall, there were hundreds of points on Cutter's matrix-"

"We have one idea of where Helen is," Sarah corrected her. She smiled grimly. "And where she is, we have a chance at finding our friends."

"So where are they?"

Sarah almost whispered it. "Site 333."

Becker and Jenny exchanged confused looks. Sarah didn't blame them; in fact, she'd figured it out by herself not too long ago thanks to Helen's diary, but hadn't mentioned it to anyone. There had been no point - no anomaly, no way of getting there, nothing.

Helen's diary had scribbles and dates all over it, but one constant that remained on almost every other page was a reference number – three-three-thee. It wasn't until Sarah had read through three-quarters of Helen's notes that she realized Helen had a few other numbers jotted down as well. They were single mentions though, listed in no order that she could distinguish. But the numbers triggered something in her head, like they were familiar in some way. A simple search of 333 with the special search engine Connor had designed (to focus on history and less on current events, after Connor spent one day too many cursing Google for being too bloody effective at finding, well, _everything_ ), brought up the site of the first family. As soon as she saw it, the rest of the numbers instantly made sense - they were archaeological dig sites. All sites where examples of the earliest hominids had been found.

Sarah didn't know Helen's plans, exactly. But she also knew A) Helen had no love for humanity as it stood, and a lot of frightening ideas kept popping into her head when she thought about it. "Site 333," she repeated. "The site of the First Family - the first finding of the earliest hominids, the first evolution of humanity as it exists today."

Becker frowned. "Why would she go there?"

Sarah shook her head. "I can't be certain."

Jenny folded her arms as her brows furrowed together. "Helen never does anything with a reason and a plan." She snorted. "As much as I'm loathe to admit, she's too damn brilliant for her own good. She has something in mind."

"I don't _know_ ," Sarah repeated, a hint of frustration tinting her words.

"Other than being the first finding," Becker cut it. "Is there anything else about that site that might give us a clue?"

"There's tons of reports on Site 333 published all over the web," Sarah said automatically. "The only thing I can think of is that they were all-" she froze mid-word, eyes wide and feeling the blood abruptly drain from her face. "Oh my god."

Jenny and Becker stepped forward, Becker going so far as to steady her with a hand on her shoulder. Sarah realized she was shaking all over. "What is it Sarah?" Jenny repeated in an urgent tone. "Sarah?"

"The First Family," Sarah choked out. "They were... they were all killed. The whole family unit of thirty-three individuals. No one knows why." She swallowed hard. "What if Helen is the one who killed them? What if she, she went back to the past, and-and-and-"

"Killed them?"

Sarah pointed her finger at Jenny. "Yes. That."

Becker looked confused. "But why would she do that?"

"Helen hates humanity," Sarah said, desperately urging them to understand. "So maybe she's going to destroy humanity itself."

Jenny blinked. "She wipes out the first 'humans'..."

"And humanity as we know it never evolves," Sarah finished for her. "She's going to create a _tabula rasa_ \- a blank slate."

Becker looked skeptical. "How sure can we be about this? It sounds a little... extreme?"

Jenny shot him a look. "It actually sounds right up her alley," she said firmly. "She was always crazy as well as brilliant."

"That's why she kept insisting she was going to change everything, we didn't know what 'everything' was," Sarah rambled, her thoughts racing a million miles ahead of her tongue. She looked down at the device almost reverently. "This may be the only thing that will save us from complete extinction."

"I hate to point this out, but it's broken," Jenny pointed out. "We're not going to get far with a broken Anomaly Opener, or whatever you call it."

"I'm motivated enough if you're attempting to get me with the reverse psychology again, Jenny," Sarah said, sending her friend and reinstated team leader a small smile. She turned around and strode over to Connor's desk, hesitating for only a moment before running her hand across the tools laid out on top. She picked up a small screwdriver, applied it to the device in her hand, and quickly worked off the outer casing. A moment later, she was reaching in, gently pulling small wires out of the way, searching for...there it was. Plucking out a small black chip, she held it up between her fingers, turning to look back at Becker and Jenny who were watching her curiously. "The device is not the important thing right now. This chip is. If one of our computer techs can tell us the information on it, we can use it to rebuild it." She frowned, bringing the chip back down to peer at it doubtfully. "However, if it's corrupted, or coded, or even just empty, it will be useless to us."

"My men and I will be back in there tomorrow," Becker said firmly. "We'll find another one. If that really is our future - if that really is the ARC, I doubt there's only a few of them. I'm willing to bet that like the detectors, Connor made one for every member of the team."

"What makes you think Connor made this?" asked Sarah.

Becker nodded at the Anomaly Detector, and the original prototype of the Anomaly Sealer standing by Connor's table. "Because he invented those, and then built the light refracting device that sorted out the key in the first place," he said firmly. "It would be just like him to move on from that to developing these devices to open Anomalies, since he's already figured out how to close them."

Sarah and Jenny both smiled at the conviction in his voice. "You're right," Sarah said, nodding her head. "This has Connor written all over it."

"Anyway, like I said - we'll scour the place and find more of them. Or maybe an intact computer, something. If that chip doesn't work, at least we know what to look for now," Becker finished. He nodded at the two women. "On that note, I'll leave you to it. I've got to check the supplies for tomorrow's trip.

"I can't believe that anomaly is still open," Jenny said, looking amazed.

"We think it has something to do with Connor's Sealer," Sarah said absently. "The anomalies seem to have a finite amount of energy they expend staying open. Sealing them is like freezing them-" she paused, and looked at Jenny apologetically.

Jenny waved her on with a quirked upper lip.

"-in place. The Sealer uses its energy to hold it, much like the Sun Cage was used by the ancient Egyptians to trap anomalies in the past," Sarah finished. "Wow. Connor was following on the heels of the ancient Egyptians." She smiled. "That's pretty cool, actually."

"Cool but rather confusing for me," Jenny admitted. "I haven't had a chance to go over any of the files Lester so graciously dumped on my desk before I'd even gotten here, but I think I'd better go do that." She turned to leave, but then paused and turned back. "Sarah?"

"Mm?" Sarah asked, staring at the device.

"When's the last time you ate something?"

Sarah looked up at that and laughed ruefully. "Probably shortly before the last time I slept. And don't ask about that."

"I thought so." Jenny tilted her head at the door in invitation. "C'mon Sarah. I'll bring some of those files to the rec room and you can get something to eat at the same time." She winked. "And be on hand to help answer my questions as I go through them."

Sarah reluctantly nodded. "All right." She slipped the anomaly device into her pocket. "Shall we?"

"Let's. And then you're going to have a nice long kip on the sofa, yeah?"

"Don't push your luck."

* * *

He started in again at about twenty-two thousand feet in the air. "Dinosaurs," Pooch muttered. He was strapped into his chair and gripping the armrests as he always did when he wasn't the one in control of the vehicle.

"Enough, Pooch!" Aisha snapped. "Dinosaurs. Deal with it or don't, but for gods sake, shut up about it!" She was fingering her knife as she spoke. The dozen or so times in the car on the way to the airport in El Loa had been bad enough. This was just pushing it apparently.

"Down girl," Clay cautioned, catching her eye and shaking his head lightly. She huffed, but eventually stopped caressing the sharp ceramic blade – standard for them to carry when traveling on commercial airlines. Sending him a sharp glare, she turned to glare out the window instead.

"Are we sure – absolutely sure – that it wasn't some kind of imaging software?" Pooch asked Jensen for the fifth time.

Cougar barked out a short laugh. "No one can slip a 'shopped image past Jensen."

"Aw, thanks Coug!" Jensen beamed at his partner; then sent a snotty look at Pooch. "I am highly offended that you think I'd be taken in by a bunch of pixels. I can tell the real stuff from the fudged, thanks so much."

"Not that I don't trust you Jensen." Pooch shook his head. "Seriously man, I do. It's just—" he waved his hands. "-dinosaurs!"

A low growl came from Aisha.

"Shut up, all of you," Clay commanded. "Jensen, gimme a sit-rep."

"Still no luck," Jensen replied, referring to another window on his laptop. Somehow – and Clay was certain he didn't want to know how – that window was directly connected to one of the computers in the facility they were about to invade. Everything this Sarah Page did, they could see. "I've been studying the matrix she's working on and I think I've just about figured out what I need to do. Of course, I won't know until I try, but…" he shrugged. "If I don't, I'll get it sooner or later."

Clay nodded. Of that he had no doubt. "We'll do a recon after we hit the city and catch a bit of shut-eye." Jensen looked like he wanted to protest the idea of a delay. "You know as well as I do, planning on empty leaves you prone to mistakes. That's an order Jensen."

Jensen pouted, but Cougar was there, leaning against him, and he subsided. "I know, Boss. I'm just worried."

"We will do this," Cougar promised quietly. "You find him and then we'll retrieve him. _Comprende?_ "

"Yeah." He was pretty much silent after that until their plane touched down in London.

* * *

"So this is the ARC," Pooch said, appraising the building with a skeptical air. "Where do they bring in the animals, two by two?"

Cougar snorted and Aisha rolled her eyes. They were huddled about a click away, taking turns peering through Cougar's scope – all except Jensen who had a pair of binoculars that looked like a pair of telescopes lashed together – at the building through the thick growth that surrounded it.

Clay lit a cigarette and flipped his lighter shut. Exhaling, he gazed in the ARC's general direction and made a vague motion with his hands. "Pooch?"

"One main paved road leading from the highway to the building, two off-road routes through the trees for cover. Lots of jeeps and military vehicles, a couple of water tankers and a refrigerator truck – and then there's the heavy artillery." Pooch pointed at a garage in the clearing near the building. "Heavy guards, and I can just make out the front of the vehicles through Cougar's scope – they've got a couple of Land Rover Wolf's in there. And that little pole thing sticking out the side?" Pooch whistled. "I'd lay even money that's a Centurion tank hiding away back there."

"Well, I suppose if you're dealing with dinos, you need the heavy artillery," Clay muttered. "Aisha?"

Aisha held up her phone. "They've got their own mini-army here, no need for them to waste time calling in troops from the center at Sandhurst. Roughly three squads or one platoon on duty at all time, four squads total. They rotate shifts every six to eight hours."

"Staggered?"

Aisha shrugged. "Looks like they keep changing the times so no one can plan for a guaranteed shift change."

Clay frowned. "They don't mess around."

Jensen stared at Aisha, half-admiringly and half-suspiciously. "Where do you get these informants?"

She shrugged her shoulders and offered him a cool smile. "I have many friends."

"Apparently." Jensen turned back to his laptop. "Well, she's right – I just pulled the roster. Clay?"

Clay crouched down next to the hacker and scanned the names, looking for anyone that could cause them trouble. "I don't recognize any of these names. Well, not personally." He pointed at a photo of a man named Wilder. "Heard of him through the grapevine but never met him."

"Head of security is a man named Becker. Hilary Becker," Aisha continued.

Pooch cackled. " _Hilary?_ Seriously?"

Jensen grinned and punched Pooch's boot. "I wouldn't talk, _Linwood._ "

The driver was still snickering. "Looks like our mama's had a grudge against both of us, that's for sure."

"Can it, clown-boys." Clay gestured with his cigarette for Aisha to go on.

"They've also got a guy named Danny Quinn. Formerly a Detective Constable with the London police. Hasn't been seen in a while."

"'Cause he's missing, like my cousin," Jensen filled in. "Disappeared in the same mission with Connor and the pixie."

"Pixie?" Pooch shot him a confused look.

Cougar smirked. "Abby Maitland. Jensen likes her haircut."

"Careful you don't make Cougs jealous, Jay," Pooch kidded.

"Can we pretend to be pros at this, gentlemen, and get on with it?" Clay asked somewhat rhetorically. "Anything else?"

"They have patrols – no schedules listed that I can find, looks like they memorize them – but a lot of focus is also on the security cams." Jensen laced his fingers together and flexed his arms. "Which is no problem – I'll lock in a looped feed so seamless it'll make ya cry, and shut off the one I found on the opposite side of the compound. That should buy us an entry time of five minutes if we're lucky."

"And if we're not?" Cougar sent him a sideways look.

Jensen shrugged. "Three minutes or so, I guess. Depends on how fast ol' Becks can figure things out and how fast he can run."

"Anyone have any concerns they wanna share with the group?" Clay stubbed his cigarette out on his boot and dropped it into a pocket he had lined into his pants for exactly that reason. "Then let's talk details. Jensen?"

"Security shall be mine!" Jensen declared. "Gimme an hour and a couple'a Red Bulls. I can buy us an entry window, and set off a pre-timed alarm in the south end of the building. They'll know someone's in most likely, but they won't be able to use their systems to find us."

"As long as you can be stealthy," Cougar commented.

Jensen's face fell comically. "Awww."

Clay ignored them through years of experience. "Pooch?"

"Through the woods towards the west side's our best bet," Pooch answered. "The patrols are thin – maybe thirty guys altogether I've seen spread out all over the place."

"Can we jam the coms?"

"We _can_ ," Jensen confirmed warily. "But it will be a definite signal that we've arrived."

"Cougs?"

"Good visibility from here for the front," Cougar said confidently. "Partial from the back. There's a hill and a gap in the trees for a small window to the west if we follow Pooch's idea."

"I know I don't need to say this, but tranqs only, guys. We're not declaring war on England." Clay nodded at the building. "Jensen?"

"Piece of cake," the hacker said. "It's not plexiglass and there's a few decent-looking grips on the side." He turned his laptop around to show them a schematic of the building highlighted with dozens of red lights. "Only two cams on the roof and they're easy to dodge if you know where they are – which I do." He grinned and buffed his nails on his shirt.

"Looks like we'll be taking your recommendation, Mr Pooch," Clay said, turning to face Pooch. "No transport this time."

"Well, considering it's only a mile away and if all goes well, we'll be working with them," Pooch replied with a twist if his lip. "Remind me why we just aren't walking in the front door?"

"Because security is so tight they'd never let us walk right in," Jensen said with a frown. "Ever since that reporter – the one from the video? – started questioning, there's been a standing order of 'lock 'em up' for anyone who comes sniffing around until they can determine what your motives are. And, we're not locals – which means they'll be doubly suspicious of us." Jensen closed his laptop with a decisive 'click'. "That just means even more time spent with our thumbs up our asses while my cousin is still lost."

"So we break in and convince them we're on the up and up," Aisha said, nodding. "And hey, if we don't get shot in the process, that's a bonus, right?" She rolled her eyes and turned away to grab her duffle bag.

"Something like that," Clay agreed, and picked up his own bag. Moments later the roof was empty, without a single trace that they'd ever been there at all.

* * *

They planned for early morning. The idea was to be secure and on the side of the locals before most of the employees got in for the day. Then the idea was – if they weren't dead or in jail –to get right to work on planning the retrieval of Jensen's cousin.

Clay didn't spend anytime wondering why they were going to so much trouble for someone they didn't know. They were a team, the Losers, and they looked out for their own. It was the same reason why he'd planned the ambush at the hospital for Pooch even though several prominent members of the government agencies were looking for them, and why he'd made sure Jensen didn't miss his niece's soccer finals. His team had followed him to hell and back and would do so without question – it was only fair he repay that loyalty when he could. Besides, if they didn't go with him, Jensen would still be hell-bound and determined to save his cousin. Without backup, that meant a greater chance of him being killed or locked up, and hey, it wasn't like they were still in the army – competent hackers didn't grow on trees. Hell, hackers like Jensen only came around once in a friggin' _lifetime_. A little tussle with the British government was worth pacifying him with.

They were split up in teams – Clay and Aisha, Cougs and Pooch, and Jensen was left to his own devices as usual. Clay and Aisha took point, stealing through the woods like they'd been born in them, silent as shadows. Cougar was in his tree perch, ready to take down any soldiers that came too close, and Pooch was behind him, watching his back. They'd learned that much from Max, if nothing else.

Jensen followed behind Clay and Aisha, just as silent, even if that was hard to believe. Clay knew most of Jensen's bluster and clumsiness was an act put on to fool the public, but no one lived through as much as they had without having the skills to back it up. When he and Aisha cleared the way to the building, Jensen would be going up to the roof, plugging directly into the camera system and taking them over. He could do it remotely but there was a chance of tripping a hidden alarm within the system. Besides this way, Jensen had assured them, he could also control the movements of the cams and reduce the need for feedback loops (which always backfired when people on monitoring duty didn't see people they knew should be on their screens at certain times). The cams were designed to be random as it was – no one would notice the camera jerking back and forth or up and down.

Cougar was set to pick off anyone trailing them – low-dose tranqs only, of course. They weren't out to hurt anyone here, and Cougs could hit a sparrow at a mile distance, so the soldiers weren't in any danger of being hit in a vital spot – nor were they in any danger of being the victims of friendly fire. Cougar would beat them with their own limbs for even suggesting the very idea.

Clay came to a halt one hundred meters from the building and signaled. Across from him, Aisha silently shimmied up a tree, scanning the area. They wore night-vision goggles with thermal imaging. So did the soldiers, but they covered for that with the cold-suits they wore under their mission clothes, complete with headgear. They looked like a group of divers out of water, but they were safe from thermal scanning, which was the important thing.

Aisha held out two fingers and then three; two patrollers were coming up the road, and there were three stationed around that side of the building. Two were by the side door, and one was barely visible near the tree line, facing their general direction. Clay tensed until he saw his goggles were pushed up on his forehead.

"Cougs?" he whispered into the throat mike.

"Roof," came the terse reply. Clay looked up and saw a head pass by briefly between the slats.

"Clear?"

" _Si_. Roof, road."

"Aisha?"

"Treeline," she replied in a whisper.

"Jensen?"

"Left door."

"I got right. Pooch?"

Pooch's voice was soft in the mike, but crystal clear. "Countdown kiddies, Cougs on two – three… two... one."

All four of them took their shots at the same time – there was a soft hiss of rushing air and then their targets crumpled. Cougar had taken the roof shot on two, the last road soldier on one, and the first was down before he'd registered anything had happened behind him. Aisha tapped the tree-line sentry, and Clay and Jensen took the doormen at the exact same time.

All six men were down silently within two seconds. It was beautiful work, but they all knew praise came later. Even as their targets fell, they were on the move. Aisha pulled her guy deep into the bushes and then headed for the roadsters. Jensen and Clay ran for the doors. Jensen had his route up the side of the building already planned – no need to touch the sensors as long as he went up along the sluice-pipes. Jensen was a pretty good _parkou_ r runner but Clay had insisted he have his claws on for the climb, just in case. He started up the side even as Clay detoured and grabbed the first fallen soldier. Pooch was on his way and would be there in two minutes and Cougar would follow behind but he would stay outside with Aisha. After all, if this all went pear-shaped, _someone_ needed to come to the rescue.

Hoisting the soldier over his shoulder, he looked up to see Jensen, nimble as a spider-monkey, vanishing over the side of the roof. He deposited the first soldier into the bushes and went back for the second. Pooch arrived, barely winded, as he finished hiding the second body.

"Jensen?"

"Five seconds, boss," came the cheerful whisper. "Aaaannnnnd….three, two… ONE." The light over the door flickered and Pooch and Clay were inside, the door closing and the light coming back on one second after the door closed again.

"Straight ahead," Jensen said. "I have you tagged and I'll move the cameras as you go – just don't stop!"

They navigated the hallways, Jensen maneuvering the cameras to keep them out of sight. There was a hallway with a soldier standing guard and a transparent, pass-key protected door partially opened. Clay muffled a curse. "Jensen?"

"Setting off the alarm in the rear of the building now," Jensen said. Sure enough, alarms went off; the soldier slid the door all the way shut and keyed a command before taking off at a run. Lights were flashing red along the hallway but Clay didn't worry. If Jensen said they were clear, he believed his soldier.

"The code is 2-3-9-7-4-5-0-4," Jensen spoke clearly and slowly into the mike. Clay memorized it even as he moved, Pooch at his flank. The door was open and they were through it just as quickly as they'd first entered the building.

"Now what?" Pooch muttered.

"There's another pass-coded door to your right," Jensen said. "It has an air duct. It'll be tight, but you should fit."

Jensen gave them the codes and they were in the locked room even as the alarms stopped going off. By the time they could hear footsteps running back down the hallway, they were already replacing the duct plating back in place. They'd all memorized the duct lines through the building, and Jensen would join them in the duct that led over the main hallway – there was one roof vent he'd claimed he could just manage to slip into once he'd torched the locks and carved a way in. Jensen's point of entry screamed 'intruder' but Clay was counting on them being safe by the time anyone thought to check the guy on the roof. _Here's hoping, anyway_.

It took them nearly twenty minutes to wriggle their way through the shafts and sure enough, Jensen was waving at them from a junction over the main hall. "Right leads to a room off the side," he whispered. "Codes are to enter but it's easy enough to open from the inside." He winked. "For me, anyway."

"Don't get cocky, soldier," Clay warned, but Pooch was grinning, and so he rolled his eyes and gestured for Jensen to get on with it. Following single-file, the hacker went first and pried open the vents, catching it neatly before it could fall. Gripping the end, he rolled forward into a controlled somersault, using his upper body strength to catch himself and slowly lower himself to the counter lining the side of the room.

"Show-off," Pooch whispered, following suit – but legs first, landing just as quietly, Clay right on his heels. Jensen was already crouching at the door with his tools, and Pooch and Clay took up flanking positions but flat on the ground – the front of the room was some kind of Plexiglas, open to the main floor of the ARC. Footsteps could be heard and someone was shouting orders. They all froze as someone tested the handle of the room they were in, but it seemed to be a routine test at that – someone shouted 'clear' and the footsteps moved on.

Jensen snorted softly. "Amateurs." He resumed his tinkering with the lock and seconds later was rewarded with a soft click as the door unlatched but didn't open. "Oh yeah, baby."

"Point," Clay called and Jensen slid a snake-like mini-cam under the door, checking for foot patrol. The hall was clear.

"Here goes nothing," he muttered, and opened the door. Moving silently down the hallway, he peered through the small windows in the swinging doors. A man in a business suit was moving towards a ramp towards another room – his office, no doubt. He was followed by a stern-looking hottie in fatigues wearing some serious battle hardware. From the videos, Jensen recognized him as Major Becker. There was only one other person in the main room – Sarah Page he guessed, from the long dark hair. Three people max. He wasn't likely to get a better opportunity.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the main swinging doors and strode inside with his hands up. Smiling cheerfully, he cocked his head as Becker swung around, gun in hand. "Greetings, fellow soldier! Please don't shoot me!"

* * *

 **End Chapter 2**

* * *

Feedback loved and adored!


	3. No respect

**Title:**  
Losing Time

 **Chapter:** 3 (A and B)

 **Author:** Stormy1x2 (traveling_storm)

 **Words:** 6,900ish

 **Notes:** still blissfully ignoring S4 PMEVL and Losers comic canon. I can do this.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

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* * *

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**

Sarah's heart nearly leaped out of her throat when the door opened and a tall man wearing – what _was_ he wearing? – well, dressed in a black skin-tight outfit with some sort of army fatigues overtop. He was smiling brightly at them all, hands up in the air.

Becker was the first to respond – half a beat after the man entered and said 'hello', he had his gun out and was moving swiftly over to him. "Don't move."

"I'm cool with the not moving," the man said, still smiling that insanely affable smile. "I have a tranq gun in my right holster if you'd feel better about removing it."

Becker glared at him and stalked over, yanking the gun out while keeping his own pressed to the man's temple. "Sarah, call for backup."

Sarah was pressing the ringer on the phone. "I can't, it's out."

The blond man wiggled his fingers in a kind of greeting. "Um, yeah. That was me."

Lester sighed very loudly. "Oh, _wonderful_. An American version of Danny Quinn. Just what we needed." He turned around and came back down the ramp.

"Sir, you might want to stay back," Becker cautioned him, but Lester ignored him and walked over to stand next to his head of security.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"That's kind of a long story but to make it a short one…" the man cocked his head to the other side and gave them a cool smirk in place of the easy grin. "You guys lost my cousin. I'm here to find him and bring him back."

"Your cousin?" Lester blinked. He looked genuinely surprised. Sarah had the feeling that didn't happen very often. "Who is your cousin?"

"Connor Temple," the man said. "You lost him and his teammates in the past and you're having trouble putting together the anomaly map so you can bring them back."

"The very idea of you knowing these particular details reassures me greatly about the state of our security," Lester said tightly. "Becker?"

"Comms are still jammed, sir," Becker said, trying the radio hooked to his waistband.

"Um, I can fix that if you promise not to shoot me," the man offered.

Becker pushed his gun firmly against the intruder's temple. Sarah could see it digging into the stranger's skin – it had to hurt, but the smile never left the man's lips. "No talking."

"Who are you?" Lester barked.

The man slid his eyes sideways at Becker and then back to Lester. His eyebrows waggled. "The hottie with the gun said 'no talking'."

There was a sigh as Sarah's boss eye-rolled the ceiling. "Why do I always find myself surrounded by comedians?" Lester asked rhetorically. "I give the orders here, and I said, 'Who are you?'"

"Jake Jensen," the man said, flicking one finger near his temple in an odd salute.

"How did you get in here?"

"Well, your online security isn't nearly as high-tech as the one I had to hack in Japan a few years back, and my team's pretty good at infiltration."

"Team?" Lester repeated.

"Black ops, sir," the man – Jensen – said with a nod.

Becker cursed and Sarah watched as Lester reached up to begin massaging his temple. "What does that mean?"

"It means he's good, and he's not alone," Becker said tightly. "Where are they?"

"Calm down," Jensen said in a soothing tone. "If we'd wanted to hurt anyone, we would have. No one's dead or anything – well, you have a couple of guys who'll wake up feeling slightly hung over, but that's all."

"Why are you here?" Lester snarled out one last question.

Jensen rolled his eyes. "I told you – I'm here to help you find my cousin. I know what happened, and I can bring him back."

Lester was starting to sputter, and Becker looked livid. Sarah decided to try and take matters into her own hands. "Please!" she said, moving forward and putting one hand on Lester's arm. "Let's listen to them." She turned to Jensen. "What do you know and why do you think you can bring them back?"

"I know you need a mathematician to put together Cutter's little three-dimensional map on your computer," Jensen said bluntly. "I taught my little cousin everything he knows about computers – but not everything _I_ know. I've been keeping an eye on him since he was a kid. When I found out you guys lost him, I decided to come over and give you guys a helping hand."

Sarah blinked, choosing to ignore the huge security lapse in favor of focusing on the word 'mathematician.' "You can help me plot the anomalies?"

Jensen nodded.

Sarah whirled around. "I need him," she said urgently. "If he really can help us—"

"We can't trust him!" Becker exclaimed. "He broke in here!"

"I'm having more Danny Quinn flashbacks," Lester muttered. "Coupled with a few of Cutter."

"I'll clear up your comms prob," Jensen offered. "Call it a good will gesture?"

Becker looked at Lester. After a moment, the man gave a stiff nod. Jensen held up a small palm-pilot, pulled from a holder at the small of his back. A few taps later, he nodded at them all. "Check your comms."

"Report!" Becker barked. Within seconds his men began flooding the comms in an effort to report in what was going on. He ordered everyone to sit tight and wait for orders, and then thumbed the off-switch. "Sir?"

Lester was watching Jensen warily. "I don't trust you," he said evenly. "But it appears we may need you, so I'll hold off on having you shot. I assume Becker was correct in assuming you're not alone?"

Jensen nodded.

"Call them in. Unarmed or Major Becker here might forget that I said not to kill you. Understood?"

Jensen nodded again.

"Call them," Becker ordered, handing him his radio.

Jensen waved him off and looked back over his shoulder. "Colonel? Pooch? You can come out, we're all friends now."

Becker cursed again as the doors swung open and a grinning black man strode in, hands up and fingers wiggling in greeting. Next to him was a lanky, grizzled man with a faint hint of grey at his temples. Sarah shrank back automatically, even as the grizzled man sent a disarming wink in her direction. His words though, were directed at Becker who still had his gun out and aimed at them as a precaution. "Thank you for not shooting my hacker. Good op techs are hard to come by." He sounded highly amused.

Becker snorted and for a brief moment, looked vaguely amused. "That's certainly true."

"Colonel Clay," the man said, introducing himself next to Lester. "Here to help Jensen track down his cousin."

"Yes, well, perhaps next time you'll be good enough to make a proper appointment, like all decent visitors." Lester glared at him and then at Pooch. "Is that all of you?"

"Two of my team are outside," Clay said calmly. "Perhaps you'd like to send an escort for them?"

Pooch tapped his throat mike. "You catch that, Cougs? Play nice with the soldiers." A minute later, he looked at Becker and shrugged his shoulder. "He said they're with a Lt West and a Lt Jameson."

Jensen snickered. Becker growled and reached for his own radio. "Jameson?"

"Sir!"

"What's the situation?"

"Umm… we've been captured, sir."

Sarah muffled a giggle. Becker groaned. "Are you injured?"

"No, sir. Um… the, uh, lady with the knives is untying us now, sir."

"Cooperation is always a good sign," Lester said dryly. "Get those idiots in here."

"Escort them in to the command room," Becker ordered.

"Roger that, sir!"

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, feeling her body start to shake. She had to stop it, she told herself sternly, hysterically. She could _not_ laugh – she _would_ not laugh. Taking a deep – if shaky – breath, she breathed out slowly. _Calm_. Sarah opened her eyes to see Becker giving her a Look. She bit her lip. He rolled his eyes. That was all she wrote – Sarah began to laugh, clapping one hand to her mouth as a half-hearted attempt to keep it under wraps.

Becker's face was stoic but she knew that was reluctant amusement lurking in the back of his eyes. Lester gave a very loud sigh. "It's going to be another one of those insufferably long days again, isn't it?"

"I believe so, sir," Becker said calmly.

"Just remember you don't get overtime," he snapped and whirled around, striding up the ramp to his office.

"No OT? Dude, that sucks," the black guy said.

"Are you kidding?" Sarah shot him a mirthful look and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Working here, we're lucky we get paid at all!"

"Ah." He chuckled at that. "Bureaucracy. What's your name?"

"Sarah," she said, before she could stop herself. "Dr Sarah Page. And you are...?"

He winked at her. "Call me Pooch."

"But only if you promise him treats and regular walkies," Jensen chirped.

Pooch shot him a gesture known 'round the Western world and required no translation. Sarah felt the urge to laugh rising again.

A few minutes of tense waiting – interspersed with a few rounds of Jensen whistling '100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall' and Pooch joining in when he hit ninety-seven – was rewarded with the doors swinging open to admit two shambling soldiers possessing red faces and if Becker was to be believed, only one brain between the two of them. Becker glared at them as they slunk into the room.

Directly following the soldiers loped a lean, dark-haired man wearing a cowboy hat which somehow managed to not look completely ridiculous on top of the fatigues/wetsuit deal they were all sporting. Half a step behind him was a lithe young woman with eyes of unyielding steel, somehow managing to make the camo-gear and skintight wetsuit look sexy. She had knife holsters strapped to her thighs and a dart gun still in her hand. Sarah's eyes zeroed in on the weapon almost immediately.

Fortunately so did Becker's. His own gun came up again, aimed at the woman. Who stared back at him as though he were an ant she was contemplating squishing. After a minute, she ignored the gun pointed at her temple entirely to ask in an almost bored tone, "So what's up now?" Her gaze was focused on Colonel Clay.

"You drop the weapon, that's what's up," Becker growled. "Now."

The woman sighed, flicked the gun around so it was aimed at herself and raised it so he could see her flick the safety on. Then she shoved it into yet another holster strapped around her waist and latched it shut. She did all this in such a relaxed and calm manner Sarah thought it was almost surreal. Then she turned her attention back to the grizzled man leading the pack, once again ignoring Becker. "Well?"

The Colonel waggled his fingers at her and gave a thumbs up gesture. "Jensen's got it all under control, right Jensen?"

"Absolutely," replied the cheeky monkey – who still standing with his hands in the air in a surrender pose.

"That's so comforting," the woman drawled.

Cowboy Hat snorted and Sarah, by virtue of leaning over as far as she could without calling gravity into play, could just make out the hint of a smile curling the visible part of his mouth.

"Hey, that's cold Cougs," Jensen complained. Sarah glanced at him curiously – she hadn't heard the quiet man say anything.

Becker's glares motivated his red-faced soldiers. They immediately stepped out and joined him in surrounding the group. A few more soldiers, these ones still armed, trickled in until the entire group was shut in.

Clay looked around, apparently completely at ease and looking infinitely amused. "Feel better now?"

"Actually, I do," Becker said. "I'd like it even better if you'd all put all your weapons on the floor – still holstered, of course."

Colonel Clay chuckled. "Young pups." He motioned to his team who took another minute to de-weaponize themselves. "Jensen? Where's your backup?"

The hacker had a sheepish look on his face. "That's a funny story, actually."

Cowboy Hat moved silently and quickly to the hacker's side, ignoring the way Becker's men followed his progress with their barrels pointed at him. He _Looked_ at the hacker – much the same way Becker _Glared_ at his own men, Sarah mused. There must have been some sort of unspoken communication because suddenly Jensen was muttering something about how he'd at least remembered his primary. Cowboy shook his head minutely and nodded at the Colonel which seemed to end the whole thing.

In no time at all, a small armory's worth of weaponry was piled on the floor. Sarah blinked. "You had all that on you?"

Clay crooked a smile at her. "You'd be amazed what we have hidden in plain sight. Maybe I could show you a few things-"

The scary woman elbowed him hard in the side and cut him off with a flat scowl. Sarah made a mental note to keep out of her way. She turned to Cowboy Hat. "And who are you?"

"That's Cougar," Pooch butted in.

"Does Cougar talk?" Becker asked coolly. Sarah could see him starting to relax a tad though.

"When he has something to say," Clay said. "Can we finish with the pleasantries and get down to business?"

"Yes, let's do," Lester said as he came striding back down the walkway. "I have a few questions I believe you have answers to."

"Oh yeah – I'll fix your phone too," Jensen piped up.

Pooch grinned. "Tried to call about us, huh?"

"Funny how we seem to have lost our ability to make or receive outside calls," Lester said, sounding rather annoyed. He eyed Jensen sourly. "While I could do without the Ministry checking up on me every hour upon the hour, he does worry. You know how it is."

"We want to work with you to find your teammates," Clay said firmly. "That's all. You keep my team out of any military channels and we disappear after."

"You do realize it's not that simple?"

"I do," Clay said, nodding. "I also know that I'm the one that handles these things. So why don't we have a chat about how we can help you retrieve your lost puppies and make it look good to the brass?"

Lester looked at the Colonel with a contemplative air. "What makes you so sure you can recreate the anomaly patterns?"

Clay held up his hands. "Not me." He pointed at Jensen. "Him. I'll join in on the 'retrieval' part of the operation."

"Same here," Pooch added.

Lester faced Jensen, still looking annoyed. "You – same question!"

Jensen blew on his nails and pretended to buff them on his shirt. "Piece of cake," he said. "It's not really that hard to do once you have the formulas down."

Sarah glared at the man who had so casually insulted her. "What makes you so sure you can reconstruct the anomaly time line?" she demanded. "Professor Cutter spent months putting it together, and he was brilliant at what he was doing."

The blond smiled at her confidently, holding up small, lightweight laptop and casually thumping it on the side. "Me and Pris already got an idea of what to do. I saw what Cutter did, and based on the mathematical profiles you were putting together, it's just a matter of finding the matches." His grin grew even wider. "Through _time_. Seriously, how cool is this?"

Lester looked like he'd swallowed a particularly sour lemon. "You saw what Cutter did?" He glared at Becker. "I was under the impression our security measures were enough to prevent leaks."

Becker held up a hand in self-defense. "For physical threats, we certainly are." He nodded at the Losers. "However, I am not technical support and I have no idea how he accessed our secured files."

"I can explain it. In great detail if you like," Jensen offered cheerfully. "Your firewalls are pretty weak, sorry to say."

"We currently utilize some of the best security software in the world," Lester bit out. Sarah was certain that any minute now, lasers were going to be shooting out of his eyes. "We spend more on the bloody security budget than some countries report as their Gross National Product."

Jensen shrugged. "Like I said. Weak."

The older man – Clay, Sara recalled – pinched the bridge of his nose. "Play nice, Jensen," he said, sounding rather resigned. He must have been through many diffusing situations before with such a volatile-looking team.

"My bad. Tell you what, I can hook you up with a patch job once I find my cousin," Jensen said with a shrug, apparently deeming that an appropriate apology for the insult to Lester's security systems.

Lester bristled and opened his mouth. Sara cut him off before Lester could insist Jensen show their technicians what he'd done that minute. He was already getting death glares from the silent hat-wearing presence beside Jensen who had been fondling what looked like a rifle scope ever since Lester had started raising his voice at the blond. "Alright, Mr. Jensen—"

The hacker visibly shuddered. "Drop the 'Mr', please?" He winked at her. "And may I call you Sara?"

Despite herself, she smiled back. "Very well," she allowed, nodding her head. "Jensen. Allow me to show you to my computer. The sooner we put this thing back together, the sooner we can track down where Connor, Abby and Danny disappeared to."

"My thoughts exactly." Jensen bowed, gesturing grandly. "After you, m'lady." He stood up, nudged shoulders with the sniper, murmured something and then looked at her expectantly. The longhaired cowboy gave her a level look that very clearly said 'hands off.'

She smiled, all of her intuition going off like firecrackers. They weren't very obvious but there were some things Sarah just knew. She held up one finger to indicate 'one minute' and waited to see if Lester had anything to add. As usual, he did.

"Colonel, you'll be with me," Lester said grimly, indicating the ramp that led to the second floor where his office was. "I need to figure out some way to use you and your men that can pass for legal in our files to the Minister." He rolled his eyes slightly, tilting his chin. "Something tells me you've got quite a bit of experience in these matters."

"And whatever Clay can't explain, Jensen can cover up later," Pooch chimed in. "Dude once made it look like we were helping a Boy Scout Troop with an afternoon of volunteer work to cover up an assassination in the Congo the same day. Amazing what that boy can do with flight schedules, credit card info, and having no witnesses - yet managing to produce notarized witness reports." He shook his head with a grin. "He'll pretty it all up for you, sparkles and glitter all the way, man."

"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that," Lester said smoothly. "The Minister simply adores things that sparkle. Colonel?"

Sarah shot a quick look at Becker, who nodded, and she turned to see the remaining two watching her with obvious amusement. "Gentlemen, if you'll go with Major Becker, he'll show you our weapons locker. Maybe he'll give you a tour of the holding pens while he's at it, give you some idea of what you'll be up against. Just be sure not to feed the animals and keep your hands and feet inside at all times, would you?" He looked at his head of security. "If you would."

Becker nodded. "This way, please."

Sarah watched the Major lead the two Losers out of the main room, and then turned back to Jensen – to see him already perched in front of the ARC's anomaly detector and past the first two log-in screens. "How did you do that?"

Jensen craned his head back so he was peering at her upside-down. "Trade secret, Sarah," he said winking at her from that odd angle. It was profoundly unsettling. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Sarah rolled her eyes, but smiled inwardly. The corny behavior did in fact remind her of Connor – she was finding it easier and easier to believe that the two of them were related. "Won't Mr. Cougar be jealous?"

Jensen's face froze – and then he was scrambling to keep from falling all the way backwards. Righting himself, he spun the chair around and glared at her. "It's just Cougar, and what do you mean by that?"

"Oh come now, it's completely obvious you two are an item," Sarah said, rolling her eyes – yet _again_ , and that was yet another way to tell she was dealing with a relative of Connor's – and holding up her hands in self-defense. "He stuck by your side throughout the entire debriefing and when Lester was yelling at you, my lord, if looks could kill he'd be a grease spot on the floor." She smiled.

Jensen quirked a brow at her. "And you'll be keeping this to yourself, yes?"

Sarah sighed. "Ah, yes, that bloody 'don't ask, don't tell', business. Hasn't that been done away with yet?"

"Technically yes. Officially, unlikely." Jensen waggled his finger at her. "Either way, it doesn't really matter since we're not part of the army anymore. Still, we don't like to advertise our business. Too many people out there who would love to have info like that to use against us."

"Loving someone is always a risk," Sarah said quietly.

"Especially when you're captured and someone threatens to put a bullet in your lover's kneecaps to make you talk," Jensen said coolly. "So like I said, keep it to yourself. I don't like to threaten people, especially pretty girls." He blinked. "And Aisha doesn't count."

Sarah looked back at him, unfazed. "I've faced down man-eating bugs the size of tigers," she said tartly, folding her arms. Her foot tapped the floor impatiently. "You're not going to get far threatening me, even if you did think it was necessary."

Jensen eyed her another long minute, and then smiled. "I do like you, Sarah Page," he declared, tipping his glasses down with one gloved finger and adopting a British accent that made her wince. "You're a bit of all right, you are."

"You are too – or at least you will be once you promise to never mangle the British accent like that ever again." Sarah held out her hand. "Deal?"

Jensen shook it solemnly. "Deal."

"Right then." Sarah gripped the chairs handles and spun him back around so he was facing the computer. "Let's see what you make of this while I get my laptop and set it up out here."

 **  
**

* * *

 **  
**

The man jogged around the large room, long, loping strides. He swung his arms in wide circles as he did so, breathing deeply. Lap after lap, he moved without slowing, and in fact, sped up with each rotation until at least, nearly an hour later, he was full out sprinting around the room. He kept the lights off, able to move around the darkened room with ease, being intimately familiar with his surroundings. After all, he'd been there for months, and not much had changed in his set up.

Finally he began to slow down, and then abruptly dropped to the floor into a series of pushups: first with both hands, then just the right, then the left. Then he put his hands together in a diamond and finished off a final set before bounding to his feet. He jumped in place a few times, rolled his neck on his shoulders, shook out his arms, and then began to shadowbox. The large mirror that faced him served as his opponent as he danced back and forth in bare feet, jabbing his fists in lightning quick blows.

Sweat poured down his body as he moved; the air was dry, stale, but warm. He had a fan that was rigged in the corner of the room, blowing air at him from behind a metal, tamper-proof grate, accessed by voice commands, but he didn't have it on. It had been several weeks since he'd seen his captor, and he didn't know how long the power in his prison would last. He needed to conserve as much of it as possible.

Aside from the mirror – Plexiglas and shatter proof - on one wall, and the fan in the corner, he had a very large room all to himself. A small leather sofa sat in the middle of the room, and a desk with paper, a leather-bound journal, and pencils. 'To keep him occupied,' he'd been told. Paperback books lined the built-in shelves along one wall for the same reason.

Set in the back wall was a single door-less opening that led to his 'bedroom'. It was empty save for a cot with a pillow, several thick quilts and a few light sheets. To the left, as you entered, a bathroom was attached to the room – enough room for a metal, porta-potty type setup that thankfully still whooshed into functioning when he flushed. Which he did sparingly, again to save what energy remained in his prison. A stainless steel sink dispensed clean water so he could wash up as best he could.

On the right (again upon entering the 'bedroom') was another small room filled with cardboard boxes of MRE's, non-perishable boxes of food. And several crates of bottled water. One of the first things he'd done upon being shown his room was to go through and count everything he had. By his estimate, he still had enough to survive for another year – or a year and a half if he was exceedingly sparing with his reserves.

Aside from the economy-class conditions, the whole set-up was remarkably high-tech – and very prisoner-savvy. There were no switches to pull out and wires to cross – the lights, the fan and the heat were all voice activated through panels in the ceiling which were far too high for him to reach, even when standing on sofa ON the desk (and yes he'd tried that and several other combinations). There was nothing he could pull apart or break to make any decent tools, though he had, in a more morbid moment, counted at least a dozen ways he could commit suicide if he got to that level of desperation. The front of his prison resembled a zoo cage behind a wall of mirrored Plexiglas that prevented anyone from seeing inside.

One final knock-out punch to the mirror, and he finally finished his workout, dropping his hands to his knees and breathing heavily, sweat running down the side of his nose to drip onto the floor. After a few deep breaths, he stood back up and eyed himself in the mirror. A determined face stared back, almost daringly. No, he was still good. Still hopeful.

Steven Hart nodded grimly at his reflection, and then went to clean up.

_________________________________________________________________________________

"Dinosaurs," Pooch repeated as he and Cougar trailed after Becker. "Y'know, I saw the video and I am still having a hard time believing all of this."

Becker paused. "Well, the weapons room is just up here, but suddenly I'm thinking that if you require proof, I'd rather you be unarmed when we walk into the holding areas."

"….Holding areas?"

Becker couldn't contain his smirk. "After me, gentlemen. Prepare to be stunned."

Becker pushed the control panel door open and entered his pass code. A moment later, the door beeped, the red light went green, and the large bay doors began to slide open. Pooch tilted his head back and stared up at the high ceiling. "Why so big?"

"We needed to give the Mammoth enough head clearance," Becker said blandly.

Pooch nodded absently. Then he did a double-take, blinking his eyes wildly at Becker. "Say _what_? What Mammoth?"

Cougar nudged him and pointed across the large room. " _That_ Mammoth."

And sure enough, across the room was a reinforced metal fence with a large woolly mammoth placidly peering through the bars. It had access to a large grassy paddock – also reinforced with what looked to be electrified fences and barbed wire and metal walls beyond that. The ceiling was a dome opened at the top that could obviously close whenever it needed to be.

The mammoth was large, brown and hairy, and was calmly accepting an apple from a technician in a white lab coat. Their entrance into an obviously restricted area was met with sharp looks by the armed guards, but Becker waved them all down. Apparently Becker was as good as law in these parts – the armed guards went back to monitoring their cameras and patrolling the fences without pause. The few technicians there were peppering the area, kept sending them curious looks but didn't bother to introduce themselves.

Pooch scarcely cared about rookie guards and brainiacs in lab coats. His attention was focused on the gigantic elephant wearing the fur coat in front of him. "Holy shit, that's a Mammoth!"

Becker was clearly amused by his reaction. "Indeed? You don't say."

" _Shii~iiit_ ," Pooch repeated. He took one step forward; then another. "Is she feeding it? Isn't it like, dangerous?"

"It's in a secure location, and it's calm right now," Becker said in an assuring tone. "We have numerous safety devices in place in the unlikely event of an escape."

"I hope those 'safety devices' include a rocket launcher," Pooch muttered, still awed at the sight in front of him.

"They do."

Pooch shot Becker a quick look which the soldier met levelly. Then he snorted and shook his head, laughter burbling out of him. "Man, that is awesome. Cougar, man, are you seeing this?"

" _Si_." But Cougar wasn't looking at the Mammoth. Pooch followed the sniper's gaze until he saw the giant, green lizard in a second large paddock. " _Está bastante un grande reptil, no_?"

"Is that a raptor?" Pooch asked. He grinned at the look Becker sent his way. "Hey man, I seen Jurassic Park and all its sequels three times."

"It's a Draco-rex," Becker corrected him. Pooch would have sworn the smile he gave the animal was almost affectionate. "Vegetarian, apparently. It came through an anomaly, injured from a knight's lance. The knight had mistaken it for a dragon. I helped Abby patch it up but the anomaly closed before we could send it back. We're keeping it here – along with the rest – until we can find or open an anomaly that's set for their time period."

"That's awesome," Pooch repeated almost breathlessly. "This whole thing, it's amazing." He turned to say something else to Cougs, but the smaller man was no longer next to him. "Cougar?"

Spinning around, he saw Cougar taking an apple from the lab technician and feeding the Mammoth. The mammoth snorted and brushed against the hat, leading Cougar to back up a step. He reached up to adjust the brim. "Hey! No touching the hat, _amigo_."

"You tell 'em, Cougs." Pooch couldn't stop grinning. "Man, we gotta get Jay down here to see this. He'll flip his lid – what's left of it."

Cougar nodded solemnly but his eyes were crinkled up with amusement. " _Si_."

"How's it goin', Jensen?" Clay strode down the ramp and over to where Jensen hadn't moved from his perch in front of the anomaly detector. The screen buzzed away with information scrolling up and down them in formats Clay couldn't even begin to understand, but then again, he didn't have to. That's what he had Jensen for. Speaking of which – he reached into his pocket and pulled out a can of Red Bull, setting it down on the table. Like an Egyptian mummy suddenly revived, Jensen blinked twice, lunged for the can, nearly stripping off the tab in his haste to get to the sweet nectar within, and began to guzzle it down. Clay shook his head but merely pulled a second can out, setting it down. Jensen pounced on that one the second he was done with the first.

Dr Sarah Page was watching with wide eyes. Clay smiled at her – she was cute, in an innocent, history-lovin' kinda way. Someone to flirt with but not really his type. If he broke up with her, she was the type who would probably mope about it before bitching him out on her blog or something. She was unlikely to set up a car bomb on him, or try to blow his head off from one hundred meters away, and Aisha already had the 'set fire to his room' thing covered with what happened in Bolivia. Aisha would also likely cut off his balls with her machete and feed them to a T-Rex (surely they had one of those running around somewhere, no dinosaur film was complete without one and this whole thing was a script right out of Mike Creighton's computer) if he cheated on her. He nodded at Jensen who had slowed somewhat and was savoring the last few sips of his second Red Bull. "He'll be fine in a minute or so."

"It's almost like he was sucked right into the computer itself," she marveled. "He didn't hear me in between the mutterings."

"Mutterings?" Clay arched an eyebrow at her.

To his amusement, she began to turn red. "He, ah... he's very close to the machines when he hacks, isn't he?"

Clay laughed and clapped a friendly hand on her shoulder. "Be thankful he's still wearing pants," he advised her. The look on her face made him laugh again as he turned to see Jensen's eyes focus blearily on his own. "How's it goin' corporal?"

"She's a sweet little thing, but she just doesn't have Prissie's stamina," Jensen reported with a leer. "I've downloaded all the plot points from the anomaly detector plus all the data from Sarah's computer and I'm filling in the blanks with an extrapolator program now." He gestured to the anomaly detector. "Actually that thing helped a lot – the geographic coordinates and data meshed really well with the program Sarah was using to reconstruct Cutter's time-line thingie. It involves a lot of quantum mechanics and mathematical equations and my very own extrapolator but essentially, I'm just doing what he did in real life on the computer. I'm not actually interested in reinventing the wheel here."

That made absolutely no sense to him, but Clay was well-used to dealing with Jensen's techno babble. Clay cut him off with a wave of his hand. "So, in English?"

"I can do it, it's just gonna take some time for my program to fill in all the blanks." Jensen grabbed his laptop and turned it around to face Clay. Some golden lines flitted around a three-dimensional grid map with dots along them. There was a beep, and suddenly a dot appeared on one of the lines, complete with geographical coordinates and a date. Jensen whooped and aimed his finger like a gun at the screen. "Yeah baby! There goes another one."

"Another one what?"

"Another anomaly in history." Jensen grinned, rubbing his hands together eagerly. "See, Sarah's found patterns in history that kinda mesh up with anomalies – the appearances of strange beasts that don't belong in that time periods for example."

"The Draco-rex," Sarah interjected. "It's a beast from the Cretaceous Age and yet it was chased through an anomaly that was from the 13th century."

"So this pattern is plottable to a certain extent," Jensen continued. "I also took all the information on known anomalies from the anomaly Detector and fed those into the program – it helped match up a few more parts of the puzzle and made the pattern more evident. The computer is using what it knows to make a kind of 'best guess' where the other ones are."

"And if you're wrong?" Clay asked.

"Well, that's what we're going to check," Jensen said. He pointed to a small device on the table next to them. "Based on Connor's notes, Sarah's observations, and the hand-held module Becker's team brought back from that future site, when we're finished, we should be able to open anomalies to the times we choose. Gimme a few more minutes – okay, make that half an hour – and we can start running comparisons. The handheld doesn't work, and the chip is a bit sophisticated for the computers here." He grinned. "Future tech! Dude, do you see dollar signs where my pupils should be?"

"Down boy," Sarah said, thwapping him on the shoulder with a file folder.

"No love, no love at all. Anyway – " Jensen spun around in his seat. "I got some of the techs here working on modifying some of the computers to accept the chip. If we can do that, we can read whatever's on this puppy and then we'll be golden. Until then? We wait."

"How?" Clay started to ask, but then he shook his head. "Never mind. I already don't understand half of what you're saying."

"You don't need to, boss," Jensen assured him. "Go play with Cougs and Pooch. We'll tell ya when we're ready for the rescue planning."

"Deal."

Becker watched as the two men wandered through the weapon's room. He was half-convinced that the man named Pooch was about to start drooling over the FIM-92 Stinger he'd found. Cougar was running his fingers of over a pair of LRAD's (long range acoustic devices). "Like what you see, gentlemen?"

"I wanna play with this puppy," Pooch said dreamily, leaning against the anti-aircraft gun. "You use this against dinos?"

"Not yet," Becker said. "This is a slightly newer purchase – right after the fiasco with the Giganotosaurus. Rifles don't do much against a thirteen ton lizard with a mad-on." He nodded at the assortment of bazookas and shoulder-mounted assault weapons. "We try to carry at least two in the trucks in case we run up against anything like it ever again."

"You'll be eating dino-steaks for a week," Pooch commented. "Ka-BOOM."

"It's strictly as a last resort," Becker said firmly. "Our primary mandate is always to try and restore the animals to their homes through the anomalies. The former head of operations, Dr Nick Cutter, firmly believed that everything we do with these creatures influences our current time. Therefore we do our best to keep the balance in check and chase them on home."

Cougar sent him a sharp look. "Do you believe it?"

"I don't know," Becker admitted. "But Sara and Abby also have a belief that these animals are worth more than I am and they will beat me to a bloody pulp if I start killing them indiscriminately."

"Now _that_ is a belief I'll subscribe to," Pooch chuckled.

 _A few hours later:_

Jensen crowed in triumph as the computer beeped and started reading the chip. A technician had just brought up the modified laptop and he'd carefully plugged the chip into the USB port on the side. At first there had been no response, then scan-disk errors, followed by 'cannot read this file' messages flashing across the screen. He'd gone in and made his own changes, feeding code into the system line by line until finally he'd pressed enter and the computer started reading the information.

His heart was racing – what he had just done was probably worth billions to companies like Microsoft or even Google. He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned in despair as he remembered the non-disclosure agreements they'd signed in order to work with the ARC group. Ah well. He'd picked up a few things he could use later on down the road, at least.

"Got anything?" Jenny asked. She'd taken to watching him closely, apparently not as eager as Sarah to trust him. He couldn't blame her – he'd read his cousin's notes on Jenny/Claudia and if half of what Con had written was true, the woman had enough issues to fill a magazine rack. He wasn't about to pry and set off a potentially volatile woman – that was Clay's domain.

"Gimme a minute," he chirped. "It's reading the disk now."

Suddenly a string of numbers spilled across the screen – 1's and 0's. Jenny had moved closer and was peering at the screen. "Is that it?" she asked doubtfully. "It looks like gibberish."

"It's called _binary_ ," Jensen corrected her. "It's the language of computers. See, we don't have the exact equipment needed to read these babies – the computer was rejecting the chip as a foreign object."

"I'm with you so far," Jenny said nodding.

"So the techs built a port that would accept the chip, and I programmed it to transfer the files into a language it could understand. It may be a fancy-schmancy pc from the future – but at its core, it's still based on binary code." Jensen grinned and pretended to buff his nails on his shirt. "Not bad, huh?"

"It still looks like gibberish to me."

Jensen felt himself visibly deflate. "I swear, I never get any respect," he muttered. "And _I_ can read 'gibberish', thank you very much. I also have a program that will decode all this stuff and make it readable for you."

"How long will this take?"

"A few minutes," he said proudly.

Jenny nodded. "I'll inform Lester and Major Becker," was all she said as she walked out of the room.

Jensen glared, affronted at the screen, raising one hand to casually touch Priscilla on the lid. "No respect, Pris, no respect at all."

* * *

 **End chapter 3**

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